"I thought it was an Indian threat," interjected Hamilton, "that if I had downed him in the fall, when the branches were bare, he meant to have his revenge in spring when the leaves were green; but you know I left the country that fall."
"You were wrong, Eric!" I blurted out impetuously, the terrible significance of that threat dawning upon me. "That wasn't the meaning at all."
Then I stopped; for Hamilton was like a palsied man, and no one asked what those tokens of a leaflet pierced by a dagger and an old branch hanging to the knife might mean.
Mr. Jack MacKenzie was the first to pull himself together.
"Come," he shouted. "Gather up your wits! To the camping ground!" and he threw open the door.
Thereupon, we three flung through the club-room to the astonishment of the gossips, who had been waiting outside for developments in the quarrel with Colonel Adderly. At the outer porch, Hamilton laid a hand on Mr. MacKenzie's shoulder.
"Don't come," he begged hurriedly. "There's a storm blowing. It's rough weather, and a rough road, full of drifts! Make my peace with the man I struck."
Then Eric and I whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy night. A moment later, our horses were dashing over iced cobble-stones with the clatter of pistol-shots.
"It will snow," said I, feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness against my face; but to this remark Hamilton was heedless.
"It will snow, Eric," I repeated. "The wind's veered north. We must get out to the camp before all traces are covered. How far by the Beauport road?"