Davia’s eyes expressed more than any words could have told. She stood silently by, a mute but eloquent protest, while Jean took the bags of gold dust one by one from the chest, and poured their contents into the water below. When the last bag was emptied he took the packet of bills and fingered them gently. Even his purpose seemed to be shaken by the seductive feel of the familiar paper. Suddenly he thrust them into the hole, and his staff thrust viciously at them as he pushed them under the ice where they would quickly rot. It was done.
“Mebbe the water’ll wash the blood off’n it,” he exclaimed. “Mebbe.”
Davia’s eyes looked derisively upon the giant figure as he straightened himself up. She could not understand.
But her look changed to one of horror a moment later, as above the cries of the forest rose the inhuman note of the madman. Both recognized it, and the dreadful tone gripped their hearts. Jean leant forward, and seizing the woman by the arm dragged her off the ice to the cover of the bush.
With hurried strides they made their way through the leafless branches, until they stood where, themselves well under cover, they had a view of the store.
CHAPTER XIV.
WHO SHALL FATHOM THE DEPTHS OF A WOMAN’S LOVE?
The dull woods look black in the bright sunlight; and beyond, and above, the crystal of the eternal snow gleams with appalling whiteness. No touch of spring can grey those barren, everlasting fields, where foot of man has never trod, and no warmth can penetrate to the rock-bound earth beneath.
All the world seems to be reaching to the sky vault above. Everything is vast; only is the work of human hands puny.
Thus the old log storehouse of Victor Gagnon, now shut up like a deserted fort of older days, without its stockade, is less than a terrier’s kennel set at the door of a giant’s castle. And yet it breaks up the solitude so that something of the savage magnificence is gone. The forest cries echo and reëcho, and, to human ears, the savage din is full of portentous meaning, but it is lost beyond the confines of the valley; and the silent guardians of the peaks above sleep on undisturbed.