Lady Merton, Colonist | Page 5

islands--frowning headlands in front--and out of the interminable
shadow of the forests, they swept into a broad moonlight. Over high
bridges and the roar of rivers, threading innumerable bays, burrowing
through headlands and peninsulas, now hanging over the cold shining
of the water, now lost again in the woods, the train sped on its
wonderful way. Elizabeth on her platform at its rear was conscious of
no other living creature. She seemed to be alone with the night and the
vastness of the lake, the awfulness of its black and purple coast. As far
as she could see, the trees on its shores were still bare; they had

temporarily left the spring behind; the North seemed to have rushed
upon her in its terror and desolation. She found herself imagining the
storms that sweep the lake in winter, measuring her frail life against the
loneliness and boundlessness around her. No sign of man, save in the
few lights of these scattered stations; and yet, for long, her main
impression was one of exultation in man's power and skill, which bore
her on and on, safe, through the conquered wilderness.
Gradually, however, this note of feeling slid down into something
much softer and sadder. She became conscious of herself, and her
personal life; and little by little her exultation passed into yearning; her
eyes grew wet. For she had no one beside her with whom to share these
secret thoughts and passions--these fresh contacts with life and nature.
Was it always to be so? There was in her a longing, a "sehnsucht," for
she knew not what.
She could marry, of course, if she wished. There was a possibility in
front of her, of which she sometimes thought. She thought of it now,
wistfully and kindly; but it scarcely availed against the sudden
melancholy, the passion of indefinite yearning which had assailed her.
The night began to cloud rapidly. The moonlight died from the lake and
the coast. Soon a wind sprang up, lashing the young spruce and birch
growing among the charred wreck of the older forest, through which
the railway had been driven. Elizabeth went within, and she was no
sooner in bed than the rain came pelting on her window.
She lay sleepless for a long time, thinking now, not of the world
outside, or of herself, but of the long train in front of her, and its freight
of lives; especially of the two emigrant cars, full, as she had seen at
North Bay, of Galicians and Russian Poles. She remembered the
women's faces, and the babies at their breasts. Were they all asleep,
tired out perhaps by long journeying, and soothed by the noise of the
train? Or were there hearts among them aching for some poor hovel left
behind, for a dead child in a Carpathian graveyard?--for a lover?--a
father?--some bowed and wrinkled Galician peasant whom the next
winter would kill? And were the strong, swarthy men dreaming of
wealth, of the broad land waiting, the free country, and the equal laws?

* * * * *
Elizabeth awoke. It was light in her little room. The train was at a
standstill. Winnipeg?
A subtle sense of something wrong stole upon her. Why this murmur of
voices round the train? She pushed aside a corner of the blind beside
her. Outside a railway cutting, filled with misty rain--many persons
walking up and down, and a babel of talk--
Bewildered, she rang for her maid, an elderly and precise person who
had accompanied her on many wanderings.
"Simpson, what's the matter? Are we near Winnipeg?"
"We've been standing here for the last two hours, my lady. I've been
expecting to hear you ring long ago."
Simpson's tone implied that her mistress had been somewhat crassly
sleeping while more sensitive persons had been awake and suffering.
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes. "But what's wrong, Simpson, and where are
we?"
"Goodness knows, my lady. We're hours away from Winnipeg--that's
all I know--and we're likely to stay here, by what Yerkes says."
"Has there been an accident?"
Simpson replied--sombrely--that something had happened, she didn't
know what--that Yerkes put it down to "the sink-hole," which
according to him was "always doing it"--that there were two trains in
front of them at a standstill, and trains coming up every minute behind
them.
"My dear Simpson!--that must be an exaggeration. There aren't trains
every minute on the C.P.R. Is Mr. Philip awake?"
"Not yet, my lady."

"And what on earth is a sink-hole?" asked Elizabeth.

CHAPTER II
Elizabeth had ample time during the ensuing sixteen hours for inquiry
as to the nature of sink-holes.
When she emerged, dressed, into the saloon--she found Yerkes looking
out of the window in a brown study. He was armed with a dusting
brush and a white apron, but it