Father Bourassa’s eyes drew those of his friend into, the light of a new understanding and revelation. They understood and trusted each other.
“Helas! He is there in the hospital,” he answered, and nodded towards a building not far away, which had been part of an old Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort. It had been hastily adapted as a hospital for the smallpox victims.
“Oh, it’s Meydon, is it, that bad case I heard of to-day?”
The priest nodded again and ‘pointed. “Voila, Madame Meydon, she is coming. She has seen him—her hoosban’.”
Finden’s eyes followed the gesture. The little widow of Jansen was coming from the hospital, walking slowly towards the river.
“As purty a woman, too—as purty and as straight bewhiles. What is the matter with him—with Meydon?” Finden asked, after a moment.
“An accident in the woods—so. He arrive, it is las’ night, from Great Slave Lake.”
Finden sighed. “Ten years ago he was a man to look at twice—before he did It and got away. Now his own mother wouldn’t know him—bad ‘cess to him! I knew him from the cradle almost. I spotted him here by a knife-cut I gave him in the hand when we were lads together. A divil of a timper always both of us had, but the good-nature was with me, and I didn’t drink and gamble and carry a pistol. It’s ten years since he did the killing, down in Quebec, and I don’t suppose the police will get him now. He’s been counted dead. I recognised him here the night after I asked her how she liked the name of Finden. She doesn’t know that I ever knew him. And he didn’t recognise me-twenty-five years since we met before! It would be better if he went under the sod. Is he pretty sick, father?”
“He will die unless the surgeon’s knife it cure him before twenty-four hours, and—”
“And Doctor Brydon is sick, and Doctor Hadley away at Winnipeg, and this is two hundred miles from nowhere! It looks as if the police’ll never get him, eh?”