"I've had this. It came in by runner. The poor wretch was badly frost-bitten. It's surely a cruel country."
But Ailsa Mowbray was not heeding him. Nor was Jessie. Both women were examining the paper, and its contents. The mother read it aloud.
"DEAR FATHER JOSE:
"We'll make the Fort to-morrow night if the weather holds. Can you send out dogs and a sled? Have things ready for us.
"MURRAY."
During the reading the priest helped himself to another liberal pinch of snuff. Then he produced a great colored handkerchief, and trumpeted violently into it. But he was watching the women closely out of the corners of his hawk-like eyes.
Ailsa read the brief note a second time, but to herself. Then, with hands which had become curiously steady, she refolded it, retaining it in her possession with a strangely detached air. It was almost as if she had forgotten it, and that her thoughts had flown in a direction which had nothing to do with the letter, or the Padre, or——
But Jessie came at the man in a tone sharpened by the intensity of her feelings.
"Say, Father, there's no more than that note? The runner? Did he tell you—anything? You—you questioned him?"
"Yes."
Suddenly the mother took a step forward. One of her hands closed upon the old priest's arm with a grip that made him wince.