"Then you had better go up to the second portage and ask Astor M'Kree," rejoined 'Duke Radford slowly. "It was he who told me about it, and he has got the order to build four more boats."
"Now that looks like business, anyhow. Who is the man?" demanded Rick Portus, who was younger than the others, and meant "to make things hum" when he got a chance.
'Duke Radford fumbled with the head of a flour barrel, and for a moment did not answer. It was an agonizing moment for Katherine, who was entering items in the ledger, and had to be blind and deaf to what was passing round her, yet all the time was acutely conscious that something was wrong somewhere.
The head of the barrel came off with a jerk, and then 'Duke answered with an air of studied indifference: "An Englishman, Astor M'Kree said he was; Selincourt or some such name, I think."
A burst of eager talk followed this announcement, but, her entries made in the ledger, Katherine slipped away from it all and hurried into the sitting-room, where supper was already beginning. But the food had lost its flavour for her, and she might have been feeding on the sawdust and pine cones of which Mrs. M'Kree had spoken for all the taste her supper possessed. She had to talk, however, and to seem cheerful, yet all the time she was shrinking and shivering because of this mysterious mood displayed by her father at the mention of a strange man's name.
'Duke Radford did not come in from the store until it was nearly time for night school, so Katherine saw very little more of him, except at a distance, for that evening; but he was so quiet and absorbed that Mrs. Burton asked more than once if he were feeling unwell. She even insisted on his taking a basin of onion gruel before he went to bed, because she thought he had caught a chill. He swallowed the gruel obediently enough, yet knew all the time that the chill was at his heart, where no comforting food nor drink could relieve him.
CHAPTER II
A Curious Accident
The nearest Hudson's Bay store to Roaring Water Portage was fifteen miles away by land, but only five by boat, as it stood on an angle of land jutting into the water, three miles from the mouth of the river. 'Duke Radford's business took him over to this place, which was called Fort Garry, always once a week, and sometimes oftener. Usually either Miles or Phil went with him, although on rare occasions Katherine took the place of the boys and helped to row the boat across the inlet to the grim old blockhouse crowning the height.
It was a week after the trip to the house of Astor M'Kree that the storekeeper announced his intention of going to Fort Garry, and said that he should need Miles to help him.