Ethel Manton had entirely recovered from her syncope of the previous evening, and had offered no elucidation other than that of fatigue. Nevertheless, not a person in the room but felt that there had been another and more immediate cause for the girl's collapse.
Charlie had begged to be allowed to "eat with the men," and the foreman had courteously declined Appleton's invitation to join the party during their stay in camp.
The dismal and sporadic attempts at conversation had slumped into an awkward silence, in the midst of which the door burst open and young Charlie catapulted into the room.
"Oh, Eth! Guess who he is!" he cried. "Guess who's the boss—the man the Indians call The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die'! It's Bill Carmody! And I knew him the minute I saw him, if he has got whiskers all over his face and a buckskin shirt.
"And he knew me! And he shook hands with me right before all the men—and you ought to seen 'em look! And he's going to teach me how to walk on snowshoes! Oh, ain't you glad! 'Cause now you and Bill can——"
"Charlie!" The girl's face flamed, and the word seemed wrung from her very heart. The boy paused for a moment in the midst of his breathless harangue and eyed his sister with disgust.
"You know you do love him," he continued, his eyes flashing defiantly, "even if you did have a scrap—and he loves you, too! And that dang St. Ledger's just nothing but a—a—a squirt—that's what he is—and if I was Bill Carmody I'd punch his head for him if he even spoke to you again—if you was my girl!
"And I'm going to tell him we know he never swiped those bonds, and you stuck up for him when old man Carmody told you he did."
The last words of the boy's remarks were addressed to an empty chair, for the girl, white and trembling, had fled into the other room and banged the door after her.
Mrs. Appleton, with an unintelligibly muttered excuse, hurriedly followed, leaving her husband gazing from her retreating back to the excited face of the youngster, and muttering: "Bless my soul! Bless my soul!" between the gulps of his coffee, which for once in his life he swallowed with never a growl at the canned milk. A moment later he abruptly left the table and, motioning the boy to follow, led the way to the office.