Chapter XXII—Dawn
The hush of dawn was unbroken. The shadows of night receded slowly, reluctantly renouncing their long reign in favour of the brief winter daylight. The shores of the Cove lay hidden under a haze of fog.
There were no sounds of life. The world was desperately still. No cry of wild fowl rose to greet the day. There was not even the doleful cry of belated wolf, or the snapping bark of foraging coyote to indicate those conditions of life which never change in the northern wilderness. It was as if the world of snow and ice were waking to a day of complete mourning, a day of bitter reckoning for the tumult of furious human passions, which, under the cloak of night, had been loosed to work the evil of men's will.
With the first gleam of the rising sun a breeze leapt out of the east. It came with an edge like the keenest knife, and ripped the fog to ribbons. It churned and tangled it. Then it flung it clear of its path, leaving bare the scene of wreckage which the rage of battle had produced.
It was a scene for pity and regret. Gone was the building which had been set up for the workers' recreation. Only a smoking ruin remained in its place. A dozen other buildings in the neighbourhood bore the scars of fire, which they would doubtless carry for all time of their service. The mill, however, was safe. The work of more than fifteen years remaining intact. But it had been so near, so very near to complete destruction.
With the passing of the fog further disaster was revealed. It was the wreck of human life which the night had produced. Daylight had made it possible to deal with the injured and those beyond all human aid. And the work was going forward in the almost voiceless fashion which the presence of death ever imposes on the living.
Viewed even from a distance there could be no mistaking the meaning, the hideous significance of it all. And Nancy, gazing from a window in the house on the hill, shrank in terror before that which she believed to be the result of the cruel work to which she had lent herself.
It had been a dreary, heartbreaking night of sleepless watching and poignant feeling. Nancy was alone in her prison, a beautiful apartment, the best in the house. Bull Sternford had conducted her thither personally, and, in doing so, had told her the thing he was doing, and of his real desire to save her unnecessary distress.
"You see," he had explained, with a gentleness which Nancy felt she had no right to expect, "there's just about the best of everything right here. It's as it was left by the feller who designed and decorated it for the woman he loved better than anything in life. No one's ever used it since. I'd be glad for you to have it. We've only a Chink servant to wait around on us, and a rough choreman, and I guess they don't know a thing about fixing things for a woman. But they've kept it clean and wholesome, and that's all I can say. Can you make out in it to-night?"