“It was not that,” he answered quickly. “It was just amazement that held me for a minute, amazement and a feeling of horror that my suspicions were proved right, though for weeks I have been sure that Adrian Rayner was the guilty man. He would have stepped into open water if I had not suddenly cried out. I think he heard me, I think he may have recognized my voice. He may have been startled, though I think he was afraid at hearing his name called out when he was without knowledge that any one was near. As you saw he turned and ran, but I saw his face as he stopped at my hail, and it was stark with fear.”
After a few seconds the girl spoke again, her eyes still on the tumult of the river.
“He was alone,” she said, “Snow-blind! I wonder how that came about. He had two Indians with him when he started.”
“He may have lost them, have wandered from the camp or something of that sort. Or they may have deserted him, carrying away the outfit. In any case what has happened, terrible as it is, is probably for the best. Rayner’s death saves him a trial for murder, and the past need not be raked up.”
Joy nodded, and looked once more to where the broken floes were grinding each other in the waters which had engulfed the guilty man.
“It is the judgment of God.”
*****
It was five and a half months later when Roger Bracknell, fresh from England, walked up the road from the river leading to North Star Lodge. There was a touch of frost in the air, and already the wild geese were moving southward, and he heard their honk! honk! as they flew over his head for the warmer lands of the South, but he never so much as lifted his eyes to look at them. His gaze was fixed on the place where the road turned, eagerly expectant, and from behind came the voyageurs’ song as his men unpacked the boat.
“What is there like to the laughing star,
Far up from the lilac tree?
A face that’s brighter and finer far,
It laughs and it shines, ci, ci!—”
The honk of the geese overhead for a moment drowned the words, but they reached him again a moment later.