It was entirely permissible for a countryman, such as Trafford appeared, on curiosity bent, to enter the sleeping-place or seat himself by the fire. Indeed, at mealtime he would scarcely fail, by virtue of his age, of an invitation to share in the coarse food, a privilege which the boys viewed with keen envy. These boys were unconscious spies, upon the sharpness of whose eyes Trafford counted much. They went everywhere and saw everything, and if there was an injured man in camp, it would take skill to keep him concealed from them.
Trafford chatted pleasantly with the cook and joked the boys, before he opened in a general way the subject of accidents—of which he seemed to stand in apprehension, declaring that log-driving was in his opinion the most dangerous of trades. At that the boys raised a shout of derision and extolled the trade to the skies. There was not one of them but was consumed with desire for a driver’s life, exactly as he would be for any other life of freedom and activity whose claims for the moment were pressed upon him.
The old man, on the other hand, admitted the element of danger, and thrilled his hearers with accounts of hairbreadth escapes which he had witnessed in the long years that he had been on the river. There had been deaths, too; deaths from drowning and from crushing in the log jams. Still, the life was a grand one for the man who was not afraid of hard work, and if he had his to live over, he would live it on the river again. There had been no accidents as yet, the jams were light and easily moved. It was only here and there with this water that any serious troubles were had. Oh, yes; Millbank Falls; that, of course, was different. There was a hard drive, and when they got there in the course of the next week, they would have a lively tussle.
From camp to camp, Trafford worked up to the Forks of the River and then up the Dead River branch, and again across to the main river and up into the Megantic woods. Nowhere was there any trace of an injured man or a hint of knowledge of one. Wherever the camp was near a village, so that boys gathered around, they were of material aid in giving him information. In spite, however, of every device, he came back down the river unsuccessful and depressed. He had a feeling of defeat, as if in every camp some one were laughing at him as outwitted. He knew the unreason of the feeling and yet could not escape it.
Nor was there, when he reached Millbank, any information from the lower part of the river or from any of the surgeons whom, within a radius of thirty miles, he had caused to be interrogated. It was if the earth had opened and swallowed up the man—or—and he stood above the falls and looked at the water rushing over them, as if he would question it and wrest an answer from it. It was certain that the man—a man, whose personality he could merely guess at—had disappeared. It was like ridding himself of a nightmare to throw off the uneasiness that oppressed him.
Immediately on his return, Trafford sought an interview with Mrs. Parlin. The time was coming when the inquest must be reconvened, and as yet there was nothing of advance since the hour when it had adjourned. Even he was grown impatient and he could not marvel that a woman, under the nervous strain of his employer, should be fast becoming irritably so.
“We have no right,” she said, “to leave an innocent man under suspicion as Jonathan has been left. If we can’t find the murderer, we can at least prove that it isn’t he.”
“Unfortunately, until we find the man, the majority will believe him guilty,” Trafford replied.
“What right had you to throw suspicion on him?” she demanded.
“The right of the coroner to know every fact that bears on the case. It would have been as unjustifiable to conceal Oldbeg’s purchase of a revolver, as it would to conceal the finding of the weapon.”