It was now the fall, and if action were not speedily taken, the winter woods, filled with snow, would soon mock all effort of authority.
The press kept up the public interest in the case. Morrison had been seen drinking at the hotel in Lake Megantic. He had attended a dance in Marsden. He had driven publicly with the Mayor of Gould, with his rifle slung from his shoulder. He went to church every Sunday, and he had taken the sacrament. All this according to the press. Did the Mercier Government, then, confess that it had abdicated its functions? Was this Scotland in the Seventeenth Century, and this Morrison a romantic Rob Roy, with a poetic halo round his picturesque head, or was it America in the Nineteenth, with the lightning express, the phonograph, and Pinkerton's bureau, and this criminal one of a vulgar type in whose crime sentiment had no place?
Did the Government intend to allow this man to defy the law? If it did, was this not putting a premium upon crime? If it did not, what steps did it intend to take to secure his arrest? Thus far the newspapers.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GOVERNMENT TAKES OFF ITS COAT.
The winter had passed. The first expedition had failed. The reward had failed, for the people, sincerely regretting the tragedy, and anxious that Donald should give himself up, scorned to betray the man who had trusted in their honor.
Donald had spent the winter in comparative security. Anxiety had made him thin, but he was as firmly fixed as ever in his determination to hold out. He knew that as long as his friends remained faithful to him he could never be taken. His mind did not seem to travel beyond that. "He would never be taken." He was urged in vain to escape to the States. He was urged in vain to give himself up. To the promise that his friends would see that he received a fair trial, he would answer bitterly: "Promises are easy now because they have not to be kept. How would it be when, behind iron bars, and hope cut off, they could not be kept?"
Mr. Mercier felt that if the Government was not to suffer serious loss of prestige, it must adopt heroic measures.
Mr. Mercier obtained from the city of Montreal the loan of fifteen picked men. He placed these in the immediate charge of High Constable Bissonnette. Major Dugas, a police magistrate, a skilled lawyer, and a gallant officer, who, in 1885, had promptly responded to the call of duty in the North-West, he placed in supreme command of this expedition, to which he said dramatically, "Arrest Morrison!"