[Chapter XLI]. The Last Of The Kinlays.
Thora Quendale--as I must now call my young girl friend--returned that evening to her old home at Crua Breck. We walked together that far over the hardened snow; and many were the questions she asked me concerning all that I had seen and learnt of her dead father. What was he like? Was he tall, and great, and noble as she imagined him? What was the colour of his hair? How old did I think he was? And did I suppose he had suffered much in that dreadful ice prison in the far north?
To all of which I answered as best I could, with my very slight knowledge of the facts she was so much interested in. O, if I had only known who that passenger was that lay dead in the captain's room! I could perhaps have discovered more about him before the ship went down.
As we walked side by side across the white moorland, my companion looked again and again at the glittering ring on her finger.
"I am glad," I said, "that I happened to bring the ring away with me."
She sighed.
"I'd rather you had brought my mother's picture. That would have been more to me than anything else."
"Alas!" I said. "But I did not know then that it was the picture of your mother, Thora; and I thought it would be wrong to take it from his hand. For it was perhaps the only thing he had to look upon in those weary long days in the ice prison that could remind him of his happier times. I think it must have been the last thing his eyes rested upon while his life lingered."
"Maybe you're right, Halcro," said she; "but I'd like to have seen the picture.
"Tell me," she continued, "d'ye know where my mother's grave is?"