I was very tired, and slept until noon, when I told my story to Haldane and his daughter together. The former made very few comments, but presently I came upon Lucille alone, and laid my hand on her shoulder as I said: "Do you know that somebody suggested it was I who burned Gaspard's Trail?"
The girl's color came and went under my gaze; then she lifted her head and met it directly. "I—I was afraid you might be suspected, and for just a moment or two, when you first came in looking like a ghost, I did not know what to think," she said. "But it was only because you startled me so."
"I would not like to think that you could believe evil against me," I said; and Lucille drew herself up a little. "Do not be ungenerous. As soon as I could reason clearly I knew it was quite—quite impossible."
"I hope any work of that kind is," I said; and Lucille Haldane, turning suddenly, left me.
CHAPTER XV
BEAUTY IN DISGUISE
Winter passed very monotonously with us in the sod-house at Crane Valley. When the season's work is over and the prairie bound fast by iron frost, the man whom it has prospered spends his well-earned leisure visiting his neighbors or lounging contentedly beside the stove; but those oppressed by anxieties find the compulsory idleness irksome, and I counted the days until we could commence again in the spring. The goodwill of my neighbors made this possible, for one promised seed-wheat, to be paid for when harvest was gathered in; another placed surplus stock under my charge on an agreement to share the resultant profit, while Haldane sent a large draft of young horses and cattle he had hardly hands enough to care for, under a similar arrangement.
I accepted these offers the more readily because, while prompted by kindness, the advantages were tolerably equal to all concerned. So the future looked slightly brighter, and I hoped that better times would come, if we could hold out sufficiently long. The debt I still owed Lane, however, hung as a menace over me, while although—doubtless because it suited him—he did not press me for payment, the extortionate interest was adding to it constantly. Some of my neighbors were in similar circumstances, and at times we conferred together as to the best means of mutual protection.
In the meantime the fire at Gaspard's Trail was almost forgotten—or so, at least, it seemed. Haldane, much against his wishes, spent most of the winter at Bonaventure; but his elder daughter remained in Montreal. Boone, the photographer, appeared but once, and spent the night with us. He looked less like the average Englishman than ever, for frost and snow-blink had darkened his skin to an Indian's color, and when supper was over I watched him languidly as we lounged smoking about the stove. Sally Steel had managed to render the sod-house not only habitable but comfortable in a homely way, and though she ruled us all in a somewhat tyrannical fashion, she said it was for our good.
"There's a little favor I want to ask of you, Ormesby, but I suppose you are all in one another's confidence?" said Boone.