Lords of the North | Page 7

unconscious of us, moved,
rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing his hat
down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece.
My uncle and I looked from the silent man to each other. Raising his
brows in question, Mr. Jack MacKenzie touched his forehead and
whispered across to me--"Mad?"
At that, though the word was spoken barely above a breath, Eric turned
slowly round and faced us with blood-shot, gleaming eyes. He made as
though he would speak, sank into the armchair before the grate and
pressed both hands against his forehead.
"Mad," he repeated in a voice low as a moan, framing his words slowly
and with great effort. "By Jove, men, you should know me better than
to mouth such rot under your breath. To-night, I'd sell my soul, sell my
soul to be mad, really mad, to know that all I think has happened,
hadn't happened at all--" and his speech was broken by a sharp intake
of breath.

"Out with it, man, for the Lord's sake," shouted my uncle, now
convinced that Eric was not drunk and jumping to conclusions--as he
was wont to do when excited--regarding a possible scandal.
"Out with it, man! We'll stand by you! Has that blasted red-faced
turkey----"
"Pray, spare your histrionics, for the present," Eric cut in with the icy
self-possession bred by a lifetime's danger, dispelling my uncle's
second suspicion with a quiet scorn that revealed nothing.
"What the----" began my kinsman, "what did you strike him for?"
"Did I strike somebody?" asked Hamilton absently.
Again my uncle flashed a questioning look at me, but this time his face
showed his conviction so plainly no word was needed.
"Did I strike somebody? Wish you'd apologize----"
"Apologize!" thundered my uncle. "I'll do nothing of the kind. Served
him right. 'Twas a pretty way, a pretty way, indeed, to speak of any
man's wife----" But the word "wife" had not been uttered before Eric
threw out his hands in an imploring gesture.
"Don't!" he cried out sharply in the suffering tone of a man under the
operating knife. "Don't! It all comes back! It is true! It is true! I can't
get away from it! It is no nightmare. My God, men, how can I tell you?
There's no way of saying it! It is impossible--preposterous--some
monstrous joke--it's quite impossible I tell you--it couldn't have
happened--such things don't happen--couldn't happen--to her--of all
women! But she's gone--she's gone----"
"See here, Hamilton," cried my uncle, utterly beside himself with
excitement, "are we to understand you are talking of your wife, or--or
some other woman?"
"See here, Hamilton," I reiterated, quite heedless of the brutality of our

questions and with a thousand wild suspicions flashing into my mind.
"Is it your wife, Miriam, and your boy?"
But he heard neither of us.
"They were there--they waved to me from the garden at the edge of the
woods as I entered the forest. Only this morning, both waving to me as
I rode away--and when I returned from the city at noon, they were gone!
I looked to the window as I came back. The curtain moved and I
thought my boy was hiding, but it was only the wind. We've searched
every nook from cellar to attic. His toys were littered about and I
fancied I heard his voice everywhere, but no! No--no--and we've been
hunting house and garden for hours----"
"And the forest?" questioned Uncle Jack, the trapper instinct of former
days suddenly re-awakening.
"The forest is waist-deep with snow! Besides we beat through the bush
everywhere, and there wasn't a track, nor broken twig, where they
could have passed." His torn clothes bore evidence to the thoroughness
of that search.
"Nonsense," my uncle burst out, beginning to bluster. "They've been
driven to town without leaving word!"
"No sleigh was at Chateau Bigot this morning," returned Hamilton.
"But the road, Eric?" I questioned, recalling how the old manor-house
stood well back in the center of a cleared plateau in the forest.
"Couldn't they have gone down the road to those Indian
encampments?"
"The road is impassable for sleighs, let alone walking, and their winter
wraps are all in the house. For Heaven's sake, men, suggest something!
Don't madden me with these useless questions!"
But in spite of Eric's entreaty my excitable kinsman subjected the
frenzied man to such a fire of questions as might have sublimated

pre-natal knowledge. And I stood back listening and pieced the
distracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency till the whole
tragic scene at the Chateau on that spring day of the year 1815, became
ineffaceably stamped on my memory.
Causeless, with neither warning nor the slightest premonition of danger,
the greatest curse which can befall a man came upon my friend Eric
Hamilton. However fond