"She didn't marry a Hudson's Bay man," Macleod asserted grimly. "That damned traitor of a Glyndon turned Nor'wester and fled. Now do you understand?"
Amid a tumultuous rush of mingling feelings, condemnation, anger, jealousy, despair, Dunvegan understood to the bitter full. For several silent minutes he sat there, fighting his conflicting emotions, getting a grip on himself. The Factor read on at the duplicate sheets with stolid absorption.
"Who married them?" was the question that interrupted. Dunvegan had forced his vocal chords into mechanical action.
"Father Brochet," muttered Macleod, not looking up.
"And where are they, do you know?"
"Not I," snarled the Factor, stopping his study of the report. "Most likely they are now in the Nor'west fort at La Roche."
"With Black Ferguson! Oh my God!" Bruce leaped to his feet and paced and re-paced the council room with long, savage strides. The Factor watched him, smiling cynically, as if at the discovery of some new trait in the man. A dozen times the chief trader tramped the floor. Then he whirled in the middle of a stride.
"This thing was planned," he averred. "The clerk was approached from the outside."
"I know that." Macleod's eyes darkened and narrowed a little.
"By whom?"