Loneliness was broken at last. The rustle of boughs and the sound of steps and voices reached the Solitary’s ears one day as he sat at his favourite outlook staring down the gorge. At the first note of one of the voices he started and changed colour. Nobody would have taken him for a man of cities now, with his beard of a month’s growth, and his tanned hands and face. The open-air colour was the stronger for being new. With continued exposure it would fade from a red tan to a yellow. Deep as it was now, it paled at the first-heard sound of the approaching voice. The man threw a soul of anger and hatred into his ears and listened.
‘About a month?’ the voice said ‘Yes. I heard of his leaving Winnipeg on the twentieth. I went on to Vancouver and found he wasn’t there. Then I got news of a fellow stopping off here, and, of course, it couldn’t be anybody else. He’s my brother-in-law, and I’ve got a letter for him which I’m pledged to put into his hands.’
‘Indeed, sir!’
The answering voice was the voice of the man of the shanty. It sounded very rough and uncultured after the dandified drawl it followed, but it sounded manlier for the contrast, too.
‘He’s a queer fellow,’ said the first speaker; ‘but this is the queerest trick I’ve known him play. Tell me, is he—is he drinking at all?’
‘No,’ the other answered. ‘He’s not drinking. The first day he was here he promised to put a load of shot into me if ever I gave him liquor.’
‘Did he really? That’s Paul all over. Oh, this the tent? Nobody here, apparently. Well, I must wait. I have a book with me, and I must spend four-and-twenty hours here in any case. Good-afternoon. Thank you.’
The listener was within twenty yards, but invisible beyond the crowded undergrowth. The new arrival was perfectly attired, and handsome, in a supercilious, brainless way. He wore a Norfolk Jacket and knickerbockers, and his tanned boots were polished till they shone like glass. For a while he poked about the tent and its neighbourhood, and, having satisfied his curiosity, drew out a cigar-case from one pocket, a silver matchbox from another, and a paper-clad novel from a third. Then he disposed himself so as to command a view of the landscape, and began to smoke and read.
He had occupied himself in this way for perhaps half an hour, when a sudden voice hailed him, and startled him so that he dropped his book.
‘Hillo, you there! Come here!’