It was a still, starlit night with an intense frost and a few pale green streamers shimmering in the north, but the big main room of the Manor with its open fireplace and central stove was very warm and snug. Our team was safely stabled, for owing to the distance we could not well return that night, and since the affair with the cattle thieves Colonel Carrington had so far as in him lay been cordial. He sat beside the glowing birch logs, silent and stern of aspect as usual, with a big shaggy hound which I had seen roll over a coyote with a broken spine curled up against his knee, while the firelight flickered redly across his lean, bronzed face. Opposite sat his sister, who partly resembled him, though in her case the Carrington dignity was softened by a winning sympathy. She was an old maid of a fine but 94 perhaps not common type, white-haired and stately, and in all things gracious.
Harry, who was a favorite of hers, knelt with one knee on a wolf-skin rug, turning over a collection of photographs on a low table that she might see, and she smiled at some of his comments. Ormond leaned against the wall behind them interposing whimsical sallies, and casting occasional glances toward Grace and myself. Resigning his commission, he had lately, we understood, purchased land near the Manor. One or two other of the Colonel’s subjects also were present. Being lighted with shaded lamps that shed their soft radiance only where it was wanted, portions of the long room remained in shadow, so Grace and I, sitting near one window, could look out between the looped-back curtains across the prairie. High over the sweep of dimly glimmering snow hung a vault of fathomless indigo. It was not such a sky as one sees in England, but rather a clear transparency where the stars, ranged one behind the other, led the gaze back and lost it in infinity, while at intervals a steely scintillation flickered up from horizon to zenith and then back again. Feathery frost-flowers on the window framed the picture like a screen of delicate embroidery.
I do not think either of us said much, but I felt that we had a kindred interest in the spectacle. Within there was warmth and light and life; outside, impressive silence reigned unbroken, with the coldness of the grave. Yet there was one man who, poorly nourished and still more poorly clad, had the courage to cross long leagues of frozen prairie on foot, for presently we heard a knocking at the door, and after an altercation with somebody outside a stranger walked with uneven steps into the room. White crystals sprinkled his old English coat, a most inadequate protection against such weather, while his breath was frozen about the collar, and the fur cap he could scarcely hold in 95 one stiffened hand was of the cheap and rubbishly description that Jew peddlers retail to the new arrival in Winnipeg. His age might have been fifty, but he had been bent by toil or sickness, and his pinched face was a study in itself. Anxiety, suspense, and fierce determination seemed written on it.
“I’m wanting Ralph Lorimer, who came out from England. They told me he was here,” he said, and clutched at the table, for, as often happens, the change of temperature had been too much for him.
Then I recollected what Jasper, who had been in to Winnipeg, told me a day or two before. “I looked in at the Tecumseh House, and the clerk mentioned that a wild man from the old country had been asking for you. Wouldn’t answer any questions; a lunatic of some sort, the clerk reckoned.”
Nevertheless, as I stood up by the window I had no suspicion of the truth, though perhaps Harry had, for, drawing forward a chair, he said: “Feeling dizzy, are you not? Better sit down. But before we answer I should like to know who you are, and what you want with him.”
“What has that to do with thee?” was the fierce answer. “I’m wanting Ralph Lorimer, and if he’s alive in Canada I’ll find him!”
I stepped out into the lamplight, saying: “You need not search far. With your permission, Miss Carrington! Now I am only a guest here. Will you follow me?”
The drawn face twitched, his left hand was clenched, and the other fumbled inside the breast of the threadbare coat as the old man turned to meet me.
“No; here before them all I’ll ask thee,” he said hoarsely. “I’m Adam Lee of Stoney Clough. Where’s my daughter, Minnie Lee, that left her home to follow thee?” 96