“I don’t want to drive you too hard, but I’m only stating an obvious fact,” he concluded. “Now I’ll leave you to think it over while I interview the porter of the sleeping-car.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
CLARENCE REACHES CAMP
The evening was dull and gloomy, a gray sky hung over the desolate hills, and Millicent, sitting alone on a rocky slope, felt troubled and depressed. Beneath her, the long hollow that crossed the big divide stretched back, colored in cheerless neutral tints, into drifting mist. It was sprinkled with little ponds, and banded here and there with belts of stunted trees, small birches and willows, and ragged cedars that hid the oozy muskegs under them.
The girl was worn with travel, for Lisle had abandoned the canoes some time ago, and the party had followed, by what he called easy stages, the trail he and the packers had broken, though the women had found the way hard enough. This, he had informed them, would shorten the journey a good deal, and he expected to fall in with some Indians, from whom canoes could be obtained, once they had crossed the divide; failing this, they might be compelled to retrace their steps.
It was up the forbidding hollow they had lately reached that George Gladwyne had doggedly plodded, faint with hunger, on his last journey. Millicent had followed his trail for the past two days and she had found them filled with painful memories. All that Lisle had shown her had brought back her brother and once more she mourned for him. But that was an old wound that had partly healed and she could face the sorrowful story of George’s last struggles with a certain pride; he had endured with unwavering courage, and the manner of his death became him. The girl had other troubles which clouded the present and filled her with misgivings for the future.
During her first few weeks in the wilderness, lying all day under clear sunshine and cloudless skies, it had seemed to her an enchanted land. Snow-peaks, and crystal lakes that mirrored ranks of climbing firs, struck her as endowed with an almost unearthly beauty and as wonderful a tranquillity; and when she pushed on through the savage portals of the mountains there was something that stirred her nature in the sight of the foaming rivers and the roar of the spray-veiled falls. Now, however, the glamour had gone, it had been rudely banished on the night when Lisle had helped her down the rocks. She, who had allowed Clarence to believe that she would marry him, had found a strange delight in the company of another man; one whom she might have loved had she been free, she tried to convince herself, in a determined attempt to hide the fact that her heart cried out for him.
Lisle had pushed on with a single companion on the previous night to see if he could obtain canoes; the packers were breaking a trail, and the others were resting in camp. Millicent was glad of this, for she wanted to be alone. Suddenly, as she looked down the hollow, two indistinct figures appeared out of the mist. The packers had gone up the valley, but there was no doubt that it was two men she saw, and they were apparently making for the camp. As the party had met nobody since entering the wilderness, she felt curious about the strangers. There was something in the carriage of one of them that seemed familiar; and then the uneasiness of which she had already been conscious became intensified as she recognized that he walked like Clarence.