“Oh, get out of here! Leave me alone,” groaned Fitzpatrick; and the two men quietly went out, and closed the door on the old man's grief.
[CHAPTER IX]
THE BROKEN PIPE
For nearly the whole night, Donald McTavish had paced the bare little room that had been set aside for him. Now, he looked at his watch. It was four o'clock.
The thought occurred to him that he ought to get some rest, but immediately his common sense told him that for twenty-five days more he would have nothing to do but rest, and, spurred on by the witches that rode his racing mind, he continued his animal-like pacing. Up one side, across past the foot of the bed; back again and down; that was his route. And, while his feet traversed but seven or eight yards, his mind was speeding across all the leagueless spaces of the Northland.
Where was she? Where was she? This was the continual refrain that rang in his ears. For five days now, Jean Fitzpatrick had been gone; swallowed up in the silent, snowy wastes. Who had taken her? Why? And whither?
When Tee-ka-mee's announcement spread through the post, fifty men had rushed out to the search, cursing, sobbing, or praying, each according to his own temperament; for nowhere in all the Northland was a girl more beloved than was Jean Fitzpatrick. Summer and winter, the days were full of little kindnesses of hers, so that her disappearance was not a signal for a “duty” search, but one in which every man worked as though he alone had been to blame for her loss.
Her toboggan had been found at the top of the hill where she and Mrs. Gates had spent the morning, and on the hard crust a few dim tracks could be seen leading into the forest, with now and then a dent where, perhaps, the girl's snowshoe had gone through. But aside from these unsatisfying clews not a trace of her could be located.
For two days, the searchers took every trail, traveling light and running swiftly, but to no avail. The girl had disappeared as though evaporated by the sun.
Then did old Angus Fitzpatrick, bowed with grief, summon his council and deliberate as to the affairs at Sturgeon Lake. Stern old disciplinarian with others, he was none the less so with himself in his dark hour, and even begrudged the two days of the Company's time that he had used in the search for Jean.