what had he done?

ignorant why his simple question should have had such strange results, that piercing look made adrian feel the veriest culprit, and he hastened to leave the room and the cabin. hurrying to the beach he appropriated margot’s little canvas canoe and pushed out upon the lake. from her and pierre he had learned to handle the light craft with considerable skill and he now worked off his excitement by swift paddling, so that there was soon a wide distance between him and the island.

then he paused and looked around him, upon as fair a scene as could be found in any land. unbroken forests bounded this hidden lake profundis, out of whose placid waters [pg 97]rose that mountain-crowned, verdure-clad island of peace, with its picturesque home, and its cultured owner, who had brought into this best of the wilderness the best of civilization.

“what is this mystery? how am i concerned in it? for i am, and mystery there is. it is like that mist over the island, which i can see and feel but cannot touch. pshaw! i’m getting sentimental, when i ought to be turning detective. yet i couldn’t do that—pry into the private affairs of a man who’s treated me so generously. what shall i do? how can i go back there? but where else can i go?”

at thought that he might never return to the roof he had quitted, a curious homesickness seized him.

“who’ll hunt what game they need? who’ll catch their fish? who’ll keep the garden growing? where can i study the forest and its furry people, at first hand, as in the hollow? and i was doing well. not as i hope to do, but getting on. margot was a [pg 98]merciless critic, but even she admitted that my last picture had the look, the spirit of the woods. that’s what i want to do, what mr. dutton, also, approved; to bring glimpses of these solitudes back to the cities and the thousands who can never see them in any other way. well—let it go. i can’t stay and be a torment to anybody, and some time, in some other place, maybe—— ah!”

what he had mistaken for the laughter of a loon was pierre’s halloo. he was coming back, then, from the mainland where he had been absent these past days. adrian was thankful. there was nothing mysterious or perplexing about pierre, whose rule of life was extremely simple.

“pierre first, second, and forever. after pierre, if there was anything left, then—anybody, the nearest at hand;” would have expressed the situation; but his honest, unblushing selfishness was sometimes a relief.

“one always knows just where to find pierre,” margot had said.

[pg 99]

so adrian’s answering halloo was prompt, and turning about he watched the birch leaving the shadow of the forest and heading for himself. it was soon alongside and ricord’s excited voice was shouting his good news:

“run him up to seven hundred and fifty!”

“but i thought there wasn’t money enough anywhere to buy him!”

pierre cocked his dark head on one side and winked.

“madoc sick and madoc well are different.”

“oh! you wretch. would you sell a sick moose and cheat the buyer?”

“would i lose such a pile of money for foolishness? i guess not.”

“but suppose, after you parted with him, he got well?”

again the woodlander grinned and winked.

“could you drive the king?”

“no.”

“well, that’s all right. i buy him back, [pg 100]what you call trade. one do that many times, good enough. if——”

pierre was silent for some moments, during which adrian had steadily paddled backward to the island, keeping time with the other boat, and without thinking what he was doing. but when he did remember, he turned to pierre and asked:

“will you take me across the lake again?”

“what for?”

“no matter. i’ll just leave margot’s canoe and you do it. there’s time enough.”

“what’ll you give me?”

“pshaw! what can i give you? nothing.”

“that’s all right. my mother, she wants the salt,” and he kicked the sack of that valuable article, lying at his feet. “there. she’s on the bank now and it’s not she will let me out of sight again, this long time.”

“you’d go fast enough, for money.”

“maybe not. when one has angelique ricord for mére—— umm.”

[pg 101]

but it was less for pierre than for adrian that angelique was waiting, and her expression was kinder than common.