He turned to follow the Indian girl, but before he could take a step his wife's arms were about his neck and her words came in great choking sobs:
"No! No! No! You are mine! You cannot go! You will not leave me at the altar! Oh, if you loved me—if you loved me, you could not go!"
Bill's arms were about her, and the words rushed from his lips: "Love you! I love you more than life itself—I live for you! But I promised—my word has passed—I must go! In a day—two days—a week—you shall know and understand."
With a low, moaning cry Ethel tore herself from his embrace and reeled, fainting into the arms of the priest, while her husband, white lipped, followed swiftly after the Indian girl who had already gained the end of the aisle.
But a few moments had elapsed since Jeanne Lacombie had burst into the room. Moments so tense—so laden with terrible portent—that, although every person in the room heard each spoken word, brains failed to grasp their significance; and Appleton, from his bench near the door, as he saw Bill Carmody turn from his fainting wife, for the first time doubted his sincerity.
Men were on their feet now, gazing incredulously at the boss, who, looking neither to the left nor to the right, strode rapidly down the aisle.
Scarcely knowing what he did, with the one thought uppermost in his mind, to stop the foreman and bring him to his senses, Appleton leaped the intervening benches and, slamming the heavy door, shot the stout bar.
With a roar of anger Bill seized a heavy split log bench, sending a couple of lumber-jacks tumbling among the feet of their fellows, and whirling it high above his head, drove it crashing through the door.
The bar snapped like a toothpick, the heavy panel split in half and dropped sidewise, and without a moment's hesitation Bill grasped the half-breed girl about the waist and swung her through the splintered aperture.
Turning, he swept the room with a glare of defiance. For a moment men looked into the narrowed eyes; and then, as the eyes of the boss rested for an instant upon the inert form of his wife, they saw the defiant glare melt into a look of compassion and misery such as none had ever seen in human eyes.