CHAPTER XXXIX.
A MESSAGE.
I think Mr. Burley would have preferred a private audience with the factor, but he made no verbal objection to my presence. He looked rather glum, however, as he came near and seated himself. He first took a pinch of snuff from an enameled box, and blew his nose vigorously; then, stretching his long legs under the table and resting an elbow on each arm of the chair, he interlocked his lean fingers.
“If I remember rightly, Mr. Macdonald,” he began, “you informed me that you had been a resident of this fort, in various capacities, for the space of thirty-two years?”
“That is quite true, sir.”
“And during that period—indeed for some years prior to it,” continued the law clerk, “I understand that travelers stopping at Fort Garry on their way to the far north were in the habit of leaving their trunks and other luggage behind them here for safe keeping.”
“Certainly—certainly! You have not been misinformed, Mr. Burley.”
“And some of these travelers never came back—never returned to claim their belongings?”
“Alas! too many of them,” replied Macdonald. He shook his head sadly as he filled the bowl of his pipe. “You have stirred up a host of buried and half-forgotten memories,” he went on, in a reminiscent tone, puffing out clouds of smoke. “I recall dozens of poor fellows—hunters, trappers, and explorers—who set out with hopeful hearts to conquer the perils of the wilderness, and have not been heard of to this day. Their trunks and boxes are still in the fort—their bones are scattered in the solitudes of the Great Lone Land. Of course a greater number turned up again, and it is quite likely that some of the missing ones are alive. You see, their property may not have been worth sending for.”
I began to see the drift of Mr. Barley’s questioning.