"It is very strange."
"I don't find it strange," said Thirlwell. "There's a touch of dramatic justice about the thing that appeals to me. I suppose you know what day it is? Driscoll knew."
Father Lucien shook his head. "What is one day more than another, when all wrongs are put right and crimes punished in the end? Justice is not theatrical, but the obstinate offender cannot escape." He paused and then resumed: "Well, we shall never know all that happened, and as you have said, the matter is no longer in our hands. Perhaps for the girl's sake—"
"Yes," said Thirlwell, "she has borne enough. You can imagine the shock she'd get if we found out, and had to tell her. The thing's done with. It's some relief to feel that my responsibility has gone."
Father Lucien made a sign of agreement. "I will come to see her to-morrow," he said, but Thirlwell knew that Agatha would never learn from him that Strange's canoe had not been accidentally capsized.
Early next morning Thirlwell went to the tail-pool, but nothing except some driftwood washed about in the eddy. The latter had worn out a deep hollow and he scrambled over the rocks in order to look down into its revolving depths. There was nothing there, and when going back he made his way across some worn slabs that had been covered until the water sank to an unusually low level. By and by he stopped at the edge of a pool. A small round object that was not the color of the stones lay at the bottom.
Thirlwell knelt down and rolling up his sleeve got the object out. It was made of white metal that had tarnished but not corroded, and looked like an old-fashioned pocket tobacco-box. The thing was well made, for he could hardly find the joint of the lid and below the latter there was some engraving. He rubbed it with a little fine sand and then started as he read a name. It was Strange's tobacco-box and a light dawned on him.
He knew now why Driscoll had haunted the reefs when the water was low, and thought he knew what was inside the box. This was the thing Strange had taken with him. But Driscoll had looked in the wrong place. The box was heavy, but perhaps a flood had rolled it down the rapid, or it had fallen from Strange's pocket when the stream washed his rotting clothes away.
Thirlwell shook the box and something rattled inside, after which he noted a dark smear round the edge of the lid. He scraped this with his knife and thought the stuff was a waterproof gum the freighters used to caulk their canoes. It looked as if Strange had carefully made the joint watertight, and Thirlwell's curiosity was strongly excited, but the box was not his. It was too early to look for Agatha, and he waited with some impatience until she came out of the shack and sat down in the sunshine after breakfast.
"I think this was your father's," he said, putting the box in her hand, and told her how he had found it.