Rams fled.
But then he came back next day in a dreadful state of mind, bearing an old number of the Macleod Gazette, with mention in it of Inspector Sarde. "We have much pleasure in announcing that the popular inspector is coming back to our district. Are we to be introduced to the beautiful Mrs. Sarde we heard so much of?"
On being confronted with this damning text, the lady had explained with tears that she was not exactly a widow, because her late husband was living, and had never married her.
Whereat Rams flew in a passion, broke his collar stud, and with one end of his collar pointing out the sun, "said a few words." I fancy he used language.
"What an escape!" he said. "Suppose I'd married her! Why, oh, why, should these awful people be trying to hound me into a marriage? There's something fishy. I smell a rat. I'm not such a fool as I look—not by a long chalk. If this invention is all right, why should they—? I'm off."
Suspicious of anything fishy which smelt of rats, he went muttering homeward. "Have another go at Loco's estimates—tampered—suppose—damned—m'n-m-m—"
The clouds were trailing along the hill, and a fine rain washed the autumn foliage into a riot of orange, flame, lemon and soft amber, melting into fog against green gloom of timber, and its deep blue glades. I was alone since early yesterday, for Broach had taken his toothache down to the Windermere blacksmith, and Long Shorty had gone with him for a load of stores. I redded the cabin tidy, baked a batch of bread, made dinner and my siesta, then sewed a pink seat to Shorty's blue overalls, while the rain changed to sleet, the sleet to snow, and a young storm woke to howls as the dusk deepened into a horrid night. Then the prospectors came home with my horse and an official letter. I had orders to attach all property of Eliphalet Pardoe Burrows for debt, and to arrest him on a charge of issuing fraudulent checks. But morning would be the proper time for that, and meanwhile there was supper to cook for weary men.
And all this time there was an argument proceeding at the Throne. With an unlimited capacity for fooling himself, and none for fooling others, the inventor had made false estimates of his great invention, and Rams, with the quivering nostrils of suspicion, at last had found him out. Here were round numbers rather than square facts, and pretty little improvements of dull assays, a few naughts cocked on to tiresome statistics, and quite a dainty cookery of accounts. So Rams was shocked to the soul at finding bigger rascals than himself, denouncing Loco for swindling, forgery and fraud, accusing Mistress Violet of attempted bigamy and blackmail. Both said exactly what they thought of Rams, but Mistress Violet began first, said most, continued longest and had the best of it. From noon to midnight, she made a general confession of the young man's imperfections, and the depravity of Englishmen, denounced her Uncle Loco and bewailed her fate. And then the trouble began for the two men, having made common cause against the lady, fell out between themselves. They got in a passion, and threw things, including the lamp, which set the whole place in flames. So while the woman stood outside warming herself by that fire, and wearying the very skies with her indignation, the men, driven to ignominious flight, set out upon the trail snarling at each other like two dogs. Had they come to me, I should have tied them together and watched the fun, but they ignored my presence at the "Tough Nut," and went on to lay their demands for justice before the sergeant in charge at Windermere.
The sky was clearing then, and the moon rose on silver waves of Alps and deep blue troughs between, along the stormy ranges which crown the continent.
And there the woman, who had no further use for Loco or any hope from Rams, was left among black ruins on the mountainside, abandoned. When a selfish soul has nothing left but self, then loneliness is tragic. Like ivy torn from a wall, this creature had nothing left to cling to, no strength to stand alone. The bitter dawn wind swept the last sparks from her burned world, and the raw chill snatched all her warmth away. So she lay moaning.