It was a solemn parting, at the hour of midnight, by that little island on the frozen river. The women embraced and shed tears; the men clasped hands and hoarsely wished each other a safe journey. Then Menzies and his companions vanished in the forest on the right bank of the river, and through the driving snow I led my band of followers to the south. Flora was beside me, and I felt ready to surmount any peril for her sake.
It was well toward noon of the next day, and snow was still falling, when we ventured to halt in a desolate region near the headwaters of the Churchill. We rested a few hours, and then pushed on until night, camping in a deep forest and not daring to light a fire. Of what befell us after that I shall speak briefly. The weather cleared and grew colder, and for two days we marched to the south. We made rapid progress—Flora rode part of the time on the sledge—and saw no sign of Indians, or, indeed, of any human beings. We all wore heavy winter clothing, so suffered no hardships on that score; and the second night we built huge camp fires in a rocky gorge among the hills. But our stock of provisions was running short, and this fact caused us some uneasiness.
As the sun was setting that second day—it was the third day’s journey in all—we glided from the depths of the virgin forest and saw what had been Fort Beaver on the further side of a shallow clearing. I had been thinking with strange emotions of the past since morning—since we began to draw near the neighborhood—and at sight of my old home, close to which both my father and mother were buried, my eyes grew dim and a choking lump rose in my throat.
“I have never been this way before,” remarked Captain Rudstone, “but I know the place by repute. It was of importance in its day; now it is a mass of crumbling ruins.”
“Is this really where you were born, Denzil?” Flora asked me.
“Yes,” I replied; “here I spent my early years and happy ones they were.”
“Ah, this is interesting,” Christopher Burley said, thoughtfully. “And here your father, Bertrand Carew, lived from the time he left England until his death?”
“Until a treacherous Indian killed him, sir,” I said. “And the murderer was never discovered. It is too late to go any further, men,” I added, wishing to turn the subject. “We will put up here for the night, and enjoy resting between walls and beside a fireplace.”
We crossed the clearing, and entered the stockade by the open gateway, which was half filled in with drifted snow. We went on, past crumbling outbuildings, to what had been the factor’s residence. The house was in a fairly good state of preservation, and a push sent the door back on its hinges.
We were on the threshold of the main room, where I so well recalled my father sitting musingly by the great fireplace evening after evening smoking his pipe. Now the apartment was dreary and bare. Snow had filtered in at the windows, and the floor was rotting away. There were ashes in the fireplace, and near by lay a heap of dry wood—signs that some voyageur or trapper had spent a night here while journeying through the wilderness.