It was so that Stane understood the interrupted utterance. He laughed a little, and then answered:
"You need not mind asking, Miss Yardely; because the truth is that my presence in this neighbourhood is due to a mystery that is almost as insoluble as the one that brought you drifting downstream. On the night after you arrived at Fort Malsun, I was waiting at my tent door for—er—a man whom I expected a visit from, when I was knocked on the head by an Indian, and when I came to, I found I was a prisoner, under sentence of deportation. We travelled some days, rather a roundabout journey, as I have since guessed, and one morning I awoke to find my captors had disappeared, leaving me with my canoe and stores and arms absolutely untouched."
"That was a strange adventure, Mr. Stane."
"So I think," answered Stane with conviction.
"What do you think was the reason for your deportation?"
"I do not know," answered Stane thoughtfully. "My chief captor said it was an order, but that may have been a lie; and such wildly possible reasons that I can think of are so inherently improbable that it is difficult to entertain any of them. And yet——"
He broke off, and an absent look came in his eyes. The girl waited, hoping that he would continue, and whilst she did so for one moment visioned Miskodeed in all her wild barbaric beauty and her mind, recalling Ainley's words upon the matter of the girl's relation to the man before her, wondered if there lay the reason. Stane still remained silent, showing no disposition to complete his thought; and it was the girl who broke the silence.
"You say you were waiting for a man when you were seized, Mr. Stane; tell me, was the man Gerald Ainley?"
The young man was a little startled by her question, as his manner showed; but he answered frankly: "Yes! But how did you guess that?"
Helen Yardely smiled. "Oh, that was quite easy. You were the topic of conversation at the dinner-table on the very night that you disappeared; and I gathered that to the factor you were something of a mystery, whilst no one except Mr. Ainley knew anything whatever about you. As you and he were old acquaintances, what more natural than that you should be waiting for him? I suppose he did not come?"