But Colonel Howell’s face now bore a different expression.
“My friend,” he remarked after a few moment’s thought, “I may have done wrong to ask your father to let you come with us. I thought you knew all the conditions. If this is a life that is not going to interest you, you’d better go back. The Indians will be returning to-morrow or the next day and you won’t find it such a hard trip.”
Paul gulped as if choking and then sprang from the table. From the baggage outside he extracted a canvas-bound box, his own name on the side. While his companions sat in silence he hurled it on the floor at their feet and then, with a sweep of his knife, cut the canvas from the package. With a single crush by his heavy boot, he loosened one of the boards of the cover. Carefully packed within were a dozen bottles of expensive brandy. Paul caught one of them and appeared to be about to smash it on the edge of the table. The colonel raised his hand.
“Stop!” ordered his host. “Are you going back or do you want to stay with us?”
“Colonel Howell,” almost sobbed the young man, “I’d give anything I have or can do for you if you’ll let me stay.”
“There’s only one condition,” answered Colonel Howell, and he no longer attempted to conceal his irritation. “If you’re not strong enough to do without that kind of stuff, you’re not welcome here. If you are, you are very welcome.”
“I’ll throw it all in the river,” exclaimed Paul, chokingly.
“Which would prove nothing,” announced Colonel Howell. “Put that bottle back in the box and nail it up. When you want it again, come and tell me and I’ll give you the case and an escort back to the Landing.”
The episode had become more than embarrassing for Norman and Roy and they arose and left the room. Paul’s face was buried in his hands and his head was low on the table. Fifteen minutes later, the young Count and the oil man made their appearance, both very sober of face.
At midnight when the last of the cargo had been unshipped, when the Indians had been fed again and when the white men had had a late supper of bannock and Nova Scotia butter and fresh tea, and when Colonel Howell and the boys had spread their heavy blankets on the fresh balsam, in Paul’s corner of the cabin lay the box that had brought him so much chagrin. Not once during the evening had the humiliating incident been referred to by those who participated in it.