Moreau indicated the box under the bunk. At the same moment her suspicion seized him and he pulled it out and threw up the lid. It was empty of all save a few clothes. Every sack was gone.
Moreau shut down the lid quietly, a little pale. He was not a man of quick mind, and he hardly could realize what had happened. It was Lucy’s voice that explained it as she said:
“He did it while I was out in the morning. I went up the stream to that pool to wash some things at sun-up. He took it then.”
CHAPTER IV
THE ENCHANTED WINTER
“I choose to be yours for my proper part,
Yours, leave me or take, or mar or make;
If I acquiesce, why should you be teased
With the conscience prick and the memory smart?”
—Browning.
Fletcher had gone silently and without leaving a trace, and with him the money. It was a startling situation for Moreau. From comparative affluence he suddenly found himself without a cent or an ounce of dust. This, had he had only himself to look after, would not have affected his free and jovial spirit, but now the woman and the child he had so carelessly come into possession of loomed before him in their true light of a heavy responsibility. Lucy, as far as supporting herself went, was still a long way off from the state of health where that would be possible. And at the thought of sending her forth, even though she were cured of her infirmities, Moreau experienced a sensation of depression. He felt that the cabin would be unbearably lonely when she and the baby were gone.