“He is a very sick man,” said the factor; “but it is not a hopeless case. With care, he may recover. But I came to have a serious talk with you, my boy. First of all, tell me everything that happened from the time you met Miss Hatherton in Quebec until I ran across you up the river this morning. I have heard only fragments of the narrative.”
I did as he requested, and he hung on my words with close attention and with a deepening look of anxiety in his eyes. When I had finished, he asked me numerous questions, and then pondered silently for a few moments.
Finally he leaned forward and began to fill his pipe. By this time my mind had strayed from the subject, and on a sudden impulse I plunged into the thing that I was so anxious to have done and over with.
I grew confused from the start—a lie was so foreign to my nature—and I fear I made rather a mess of it. What words I used I cannot recall, but I incoherently told the factor that I wished to leave the fort at once and go down country, pleading as an excuse that I was tired of the lonely life of the wilderness and had taken a fancy to carve a future for myself among the towns.
By the expression of his face I was certain that he suspected the truth, and I could have bitten my tongue off with chagrin and shame. He looked at me hard.
“You would leave the service of the company?” he asked. “And with your fine chances!”
“I might be transferred—Fort Garry would suit me nicely,” I blundered, quite forgetting what I had said previously.
“This is not the time to make such a demand,” Griffith Hawke replied, not unkindly. “I want you here. There will be trouble in the North before many days.”
“I am very anxious to go,” I persisted doggedly.
“I can’t spare you,” he said sharply. “Let that end the discussion for the present. In the spring if you are of the same mind—”