Lost in the backwoods

by E. C. Kenyon

"Can you tell us why?" asked Mr. Morton, regarding her with great interest.

Cynthy blushed deeply. "I'm engaged to be married," she said, "to a young man named Harry Quilter. He got into difficulties, and would have been ruined by some men, up at Iron Mountain, if it hadn't been for Mr. Gerald. He took his part and stuck up for him, besides paying some money Harry owed. And afterwards he got my Harry to go about hunting with him until he'd got all sorts of Mr. Gerald's wise maxims and good thoughts into his head. Now Harry has set up a store—a shop, you know, only they call them all stores here—and he's doing well. My father says Mr. Gerald has been the making of him."

"I am not surprised you think gratefully of him," said Mr. Morton. "But how did such a man come to be lodging in this lonely house?"

"Well, I don't know exactly, but I think he took compassion on old Jabez, who always posed as a very poor, half-starved old man, and thought it would be kind to lodge with him and pay him well for it when he hunted in this neighbourhood. He was always doing kind things like that. Pete, the old man's son, was a hunter too, and perhaps he helped to persuade Mr. Gerald to lodge here, telling him it was a good centre from which to hunt deer in the forest round. He used to go out hunting with Mr. Gerald. Perhaps he thought even then that if he killed the old man whilst Mr. Gerald was with them he might swear the latter did it. He's that cunning, is Pete."

"How was the old man killed?"

"No one knows rightly. Pete declared that Mr. Gerald had knocked him down with the butt end of his gun and thrown him into the river—the body was never recovered."

"But how was it such a man as Pete could be believed before this Mr. Gerald?"

"Well, you see the folks about here had known Pete from a child; he had grown up amongst them, and they never thought he could do it. Then the trappers and hunters and such-like all hang together, and what one man says the others always hold by. Besides, Mr. Gerald was an Englishman—and some of the people here are rather set against the English just now—and he had made himself a bit unpopular by taking the cause of the weak and despised against the richer, stronger men, and these last couldn't make out what he did it for. 'We shall see through his little game one day,' they said. So when Pete said Mr. Gerald had killed his father and taken all his money—a very considerable amount—they believed him. But there weren't any police here, and there was some delay, during which Mr. Gerald got away! It was a pity he did that. But he never cared much for people's opinion, and he may have thought he would rather go away than fight the matter out." But Cynthy sighed. "It always makes a man look guilty," she added, "when he runs away. However, Cyril, you've heard as well as I Pete's confession, that he committed the crime himself."

"Yes, he said so! What a fright he was in!" cried the boy. "I never saw anyone so much afraid in my life!"

"A guilty conscience is a terrible thing," remarked Mr. Morton. "But, Cynthy," he added to the American girl, "it is rather a coincidence that the reason we came to North America was to find a brother of mine, who went there many years ago, named Gerald Morton."