"So was I," was the prompt rejoinder. Then he felt for his watch, saying: "Wait a moment, let's see if it really was last night."
She waited; and then—"Was it?" she inquired eagerly.
"Yes, it must have been; my watch is still running."
She put her hand to her head. "I can't seem to think very clearly. If we were in Quebec last night, we can't be so very far from Quebec this morning. Can't you—don't you recognize this place at all?"
Prime took his first comprehensive survey of the surroundings. So far as could be seen there was nothing but the lake, with its farther shore dimly visible, and the primeval forest of pine, spruce, fir, and ghostly birch—a forest all-enveloping, shadowy, and rather forbidding, even with the summer morning sunlight playing upon it.
"It looks as if we might be a long way from Quebec," he ventured. "I am not very familiar with the Provinces, but these woods——"
She interrupted him anxiously. "A long way? How could it be—in a single night?" Then: "You are giving me to understand that you are not—that you don't know how we come to be here?"
"You must believe that, if you can't believe anything else," he hastened to say. "I don't know where we are, or how we got here, or why we should be here. In other words, I am not the kidnapper; I'm the kidnapped—or at least half of them."
"It seems as if it must be a bad dream," she returned, with the frown of perplexity growing between the pretty eyes. "Things like this don't really happen, you know."
"I know they don't, as a rule. I've tried to make them happen, now and then, on paper, but they always seem to lack a good bit in the way of verisimilitude."