"But you have not told me the sequel," said Millicent. "Did you lynch the miscreant in accordance with the traditional customs of the West, or how did Mr. Thurston punish him? He is not a man who lightly forgives an injury."
"No," replied Gillow, rashly. "Against my advice, though my respected employer is difficult to reason with, he kept the rascal in camp, both feeding and paying him well."
"You surprise me. I should have expected a more dramatic finale." Millicent's tone might have deceived a much more clever man who did not know her husband's position. "Why did he do so?"
There were, however, limits to English Jim's communicativeness, and he answered: "Mr. Thurston did not explain his motives, and it is not always wise to ask him injudicious questions."
Millicent, having learned what she desired to know, rested content with this, and chatted on other subjects until the big bell clanged, and the whistle shrieked out its warning. Then the dismissed Gillow with her thanks, and the last she saw of him he was being held back by a policeman as he struggled to scale a lofty railing while the steamer slid clear of the wharf. He waved an arm in the air shouting frantically, and through the thud of paddles she caught the disjointed sentences, "Very sorry. Forgot baggage checks—all your boxes here. Leave first steamer—sending checks by mail!"
"It is impossible for us to turn back, madam," said the purser to whom Millicent appealed. "The baggage will, no doubt, follow the day after to-morrow."
"But that gentleman has my ticket, and doesn't know my address!" protested the unfortunate passenger, and the purser answered:
"I really cannot help it, but I will telegraph to any of your friends from the first way-port we call at, madam."
When the steamer had vanished behind the stately pines shrouding the Narrows, English Jim sat down upon a timber-head and swore a little at what he called his luck, before he uneasily recounted the folded papers in his wallet.
"A pretty mess I've made of it all, and there'll be no end of trouble if Thurston hears of this," he said aloud, so that a loafing porter heard and grinned. "I'll write a humble letter—but, confound it, I don't know where she's going to, and now here is one of those distressful tracings missing. It must have been that old sketch of Savine's, and Thurston will never want it, while nobody but a draughtsman could make head or tail of the thing. Anyway, I'll get some dinner before I decide what is best to be done."