“The longer you stand talking here the longer it will be before you get back. If you are afraid for the safety of the gentleman, pray stay here with him and give me the paddle—I will take the boat down alone.”
The boatman said nothing more, but shot the canoe out from the landing and proceeded rapidly down the stream.
Miss Sommerton meditated bitterly on the disappointments and annoyances of the day. Once fairly away, conscience began to trouble her, and she remembered that the gentleman so unceremoniously left in the woods without any possibility of getting away was a man whom Mr. Mason, her friend, evidently desired very much to please. Little had been said by the boatmen, merely a brief word of command now and then from the elder who stood in the stern, until they passed down the rapids. Then Miss Sommerton caught a grumbling word in French which made her heart stand still.
“What is that you said?” she cried to the elder boatman.
He did not answer, but solemnly paddled onward.
“Answer me,” demanded Miss Sommerton. “What is that you said about the gentleman who went up with us this morning?”
“I said,” replied the half-breed, with a grim severity that even the remembrance of gifts of tobacco could not mitigate, “that the canoe belonged to him today.”
“How dare you say such a thing! The canoe was mine. Mr. Mason gave it to me. It was mine for to-day.”
“I know nothing about that,” returned the boatman doggedly; “but I do know that three days ago Mr. Mason came to me with this gentleman’s letter in his hand and said, ‘Pierre, Mr. Trenton is to have the canoe for Tuesday. See it is in good order, and no one else is to have it for that day.’ That is what Mr. Mason said, and when they were down at the canoe this morning, Mr. Mason asked Mr. Trenton if he would let you go up to the falls in his canoe, and he said ‘Yes.’”
Miss Sommerton sat there too horrified to speak. A wild resentment against the duplicity of Ed. Mason arose for a moment in her heart, but it speedily sank as she viewed her own conduct in the light of this astounding revelation. She had abused an unknown gentleman like a pickpocket, and had finally gone off with his canoe, leaving him marooned, as it were, to whose courtesy she was indebted for being there at all. Overcome by the thoughts that crowded so quickly upon her, she buried her face in her hands and wept. But this was only for an instant. Raising her head again, with the imperious air characteristic of her, she said to the boatman—