The High Constable looked ruefully at his clothing, torn and covered with mud. M. Bissonnette had ample energy. He entered upon the hunt with a light heart. He had not spared himself, and had even ventured into the wood without either long boots or snow-shoes. He was fatigued and dilapidated, but he had not caught Donald.
"All right, your honor," said the High Constable, when the Major has signed a batch of warrants, "I will have these attended to at once."
The High Constable was as good as his word.
The prominent friends of Donald were arrested and conveyed to Sherbrooke Jail, bail being refused.
Major Dugas had committed an error. This measure, undertaken with the proper motive of putting an end to the struggle by depriving the outlaw of all chance of help, was impolitic. It accomplished nothing. The men were arrested, but the women remained. The shelters still remained for the fugitive. A bitter feeling now grew in the common breast against the police—a feeling which the women, whose sympathies were with the outlaw, and who resented the arrest of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, did their utmost to encourage. The police found it hopeless to get a scrap of information. The common people even refused to fraternize with them in the evenings when they were gathered round the bar-room of the village hotel.
During this second week the police made a great effort to locate the fugitive. There were constant rumors regarding his whereabouts. He had been seen at Gould. He had slept last night at his Father's house. He had been seen on the edge of the wood. He had been seen to board a train bound for Montreal. The Scotch delight in grim humor. These rumors reached the police at their meals, and there was a scramble for firearms and a rush for the wagons. They reached them at midnight, while they were dreaming of terrific encounters with murderous outlaws in the heart of the forest, and there was a wild rush into the darkness. A few of Donald's nearest friends, who had escaped arrest, and started the rumors to favor the movements of the outlaw, laughed sardonically at the labors they imposed upon the police.
CHAPTER XXXI. "MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE."
"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met and never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted."
Ideal love does not ask conventional recognition. Love is not comfort, nor house, nor lands, nor the tame delights of use and wont. Love is sacrifice. Always ask love to pour out its gifts upon the altar of sacrifice. This is to make love divine. But fill the cup of love with comfort, and certainty, and calm days of ease, and you make it poor and cheap. The zest of love is uncertainty. When love has to breast the Hellespont it feels its most impassioned thrill. Let there be distance, and danger, and separation and tears in love. Let there be dull certainty, and custom stales its dearest delights.