“Yes, everything.”
“Even that you would have done it yourself?”
“Yes, I believe that. There!—he is shouting again!”
“Will you bring me something to smoke? I haven’t a cigarette left.”
“Yes, yes,” she cried, and ran from the barn.
CHAPTER III
CATHERINE’S PLAN
Old Gaspard Javet did not return to the war-path with the celerity feared by Catherine. He kept to his bed all that afternoon and all the next day, his rifle on the patchwork quilt beside him, without showing any sign of his usual energy beyond the power of his voice and an occasional flash of the eyes. The tumble had given his dry joints and stiff muscles a painful wrenching; and his mind had also suffered from the sudden shock of the fall and the emotional explosion that had led to it. Now and then, for brief periods, his memory of the immediate past served him faithfully and he thought clearly and violently on the subject of the unwelcome intruder; and at other times, for hours together, he lay in a state of peace and mild bewilderment.
To understand this old man, one must know that he was more Scottish than French, (despite his name), and that a dark old strain of Iroquois blood ran in his veins. He had lived rough and wild most of the years of his life, and neither the ministers of the Kirk nor the priests of the Church of Rome had enjoyed a fair opportunity of shaping him to any authorized form of religious thought and practice. He had been a scoffer and unbeliever until past middle-life; but for years now he had been deeply, and sometimes violently, religious according to his own lights and to laws of his own conception. Born in the wilderness far north of the city of Quebec eighty years ago, of a father of two strains of blood and a mother of three, he had been bred early to self-reliance, privation, loneliness, and physical dexterity and endurance. He spoke French and English fluently but incorrectly, several Indian languages with as much fluency as their vocabularies permitted, and he read English with difficulty. All his reading was done in Holy Writ; and, considering the laborious process of that reading, the ease and freedom of his interpretations were astonishing.
While the old man was confined to his bed, Akerley was permitted almost unlimited freedom of action; but he was not allowed to enter the house or intrude on the field of vision of Gaspard’s bedroom window. He milked the cows, fed the calves and pigs, and hoed in a secluded field of turnips and corn. For two nights he made his bed in the hay of the big barn, with blankets brought to him by the girl. She also supplied him with a clay pipe and tobacco belonging to her grandfather; and though he had smoked cigarettes for years and the first pipeful made his head spin, he soon learned to take his tobacco hot and heavy according to the custom obtaining in those woods. He saw and talked to the girl frequently during that time. She frankly seized every opportunity of leaving her grandfather and her household tasks to be with him. She did not question him further, just then, concerning his deed of violence, nor did her manner toward him suggest either fear or repugnance after he had made his confession. And yet her manner was not entirely as it had been before his frank answers to her questions had placed him at her mercy. It was changed for the better. It was more considerate of his feelings. In short, it was the manner of a sympathetic and trusting friend; and yet she knew nothing more of him, good or bad, than the bad he had told of himself. He was wise enough, understanding enough, not to doubt her full recognition of the fact that he had placed his freedom, his honor and perhaps his life, in her hands. He believed that her manner of sympathy was sincere. He credited her with a heart of utter kindness and an unshaken faith in her own instincts concerning the hearts of others; and he was deeply moved by admiration and gratitude.
She brought him his supper at seven o’clock in the evening of the second day of his residence in the barn, and went back to the house immediately. He made short work of the food, then took up a position behind the barn-yard fence, from which he had a clear view of the house, and awaited her reappearance. When eight o’clock came with no sight of her he felt a sudden restlessness and began to pace back and forth. By half-past eight he was in a fine fume of impatience and anxiety; and then he suddenly realized the silliness of it and made bitter fun of himself. She was safe, there in her own home not two hundred yards away—so why worry about her? And who was he to worry about her? She had never heard of him, nor he of her, four days ago. Why should he expect her to come hurrying back to talk to him? Wouldn’t it be the natural thing for her to prefer her grandfather’s company to his?