“You knew these men?” he asked.
“Yes; at the time.”
“And you have no recollection of Osmund Maiden? He would have been a young man of about twenty—handsome and spirited, well educated.”
“I have told you before, sir,” replied the factor, “that the name is strange to me. I should probably recall him if he had passed through the fort, for I have a very keen memory.”
“Twenty-nine years is a long time—long enough for much to slip the mind,” said Mr. Burley. “I have been in the Canadas for the better part of a year, sir, and I have made not the slightest advancement in the matter that brought me from England. It is strange that a man should vanish with leaving a clew behind him, and I will not confess that I am beaten. My task, gentlemen, is to find Osmund Maiden alive, or to discover clear proof of his death. And it occurred to me to-night that he may have been one of those luckless travelers who passed through Fort Garry to tempt fortune in the wilderness.”
“It is not impossible,” replied Macdonald. “I could not swear to the contrary.”
“It seems like enough,” said I. “At that period few went to the far north except by way of Fort Garry.”
Mr. Burley gave me a grateful glance, and regaled himself with a second pinch of snuff.
“I will come to the point, Mr. Macdonald,” he resumed. “These unclaimed trunks and boxes—you say they are in the fort?”
“Yes; they are stored in an upper room of this very house—at least, the greater part of them. All that were deposited here during the last five or six years are in another building.”