"If I may say so, sir, I prefer to stand."
"Caw," said Miss Handyside, "take a chair."
"Very good, miss," said Caw, and seated himself near the door.
"As I learned by consulting old newspapers on the other side," said Alan, "the expedition returned home safely at the time appointed; but I was reported lost—lost while out hunting. I'll start from that hunting episode, though trifling incidents had happened before then, which ought, perhaps, to have put me on the alert. One of the best shots, if not the best, in the expedition was a man named Flitch. Like myself, he joined in place of another man, almost at the last moment. He was a rough character, and his position was merely that of an odd-job man, but I must say he did most things well, especially in the mechanical line. He and I had frequently made hunting excursions together, but always with one or two other members of the party. And now, for the first time, we went out from the camp alone."
"Oh!" murmured Marjorie.
"We tramped an unusually long way from the camp—at Flitch's instigation, as I recognised afterwards; but in the end we were rewarded by coming on a fine bear. 'You take first shot,' said Flitch, in his curt, sullen fashion. I did, and was lucky. But the gun was not down from my shoulder when Flitch deliberately shot me in the back—not with his gun, but with a revolver he had never shown before—"
"The dirty hound!" growled Caw.
"I fell, feeling horribly sick, and as I lay I saw him toss the revolver into a seal hole. Then, as he stood staring at me, I must have fainted."
"The beast!" cried Marjorie.
"When I came to myself—how long I remained unconscious, I never learned exactly—I was on a sort of bed, and an aged Eskimo was bending over me. I had been picked up by a couple of his party out after seals. I must have lain there for weeks under the care of that queer old medicine man who, somehow, contrived to doctor or bewitch me back from the grave, for the wound was rather a bad one. The Eskimos treated me very decently, and it was not till I was convalescent that I realised I was their prisoner. I rather think they must have fled with me from the search party mentioned in the newspapers. The tribe, as far as I could gather, had a grudge against white men in general, though not against any person in particular. Well, I practically became one of them for the winter that followed. In time I grew fit and ready for anything, but they had annexed my gun and other belongings, which left me pretty helpless. However, I had the luck to save one of the young men during a tussle with a bear, and he was absurdly grateful. Eventually he planned a way of escape and guided me, after a good many mishaps, to an American whaler that had been compelled to winter in the ice. I told the skipper most of my story, but begged him to keep it quiet from the others, and between us we invented a plausible enough tale for the crew. The ship came out of the ice all right, but was wrecked, by running ashore, on the homeward trip. Some of us got to land and found our way into British Columbia. I had enough money to take me across Canada, but when I got to Montreal I was penniless. I took any jobs that offered until I had scraped together enough for a steerage ticket home—"