had set something stirring strangely within him. It
was a desire, whimsical and undecided at first, to thrust his face out
into that darkness and feel the sting of the wind and snow. It was Father
Roland's world. And Father Roland had invited him to enter it. That
was the curious part of the situation, as it was impressed upon him as
he sat with his face flattened against the window. The Little Missioner
had invited him, and the night was daring him. For a single moment the
incongruity of it all made him forget himself, and he laughed--a
chuckling, half-broken, and out-of-tune sort of laugh. It was the first
time in a year that he had forgotten himself anywhere near to a point
resembling laughter, and in the sudden and inexplicable spontaneity of
it he was startled. He turned quickly, as though some one at his side
had laughed and he was about to demand an explanation. He looked
across the aisle and his eyes met squarely the eyes of a woman.
He saw nothing but the eyes at first. They were big, dark, questing
eyes--eyes that had in them a hunting look, as though they hoped to
find in his face the answer to a great question. Never in his life had he
seen eyes that were so haunted by a great unrest, or that held in their
lustrous depths the smouldering glow of a deeper grief. Then the face
added itself to the eyes. It was not a young face. The woman was past
forty. But this age did not impress itself over a strange and appealing
beauty in her countenance which was like the beauty of a flower whose
petals are falling. Before David had seen more than this she turned her
eyes from him slowly and doubtfully, as if not quite convinced that she
had found what she sought, and faced the darkness beyond her own
side of the car.
David was puzzled, and he looked at her with still deeper interest. Her
seat was turned so that it was facing him across the aisle, three seats
ahead, and he could look at her without conspicuous effort or rudeness.
Her hood had slipped down and hung by its long scarf about her
shoulders. She leaned toward the window, and as she stared out, her
chin rested in the cup of her hand. He noticed that her hand was thin,
and that there was a shadowy hollow in the white pallor of her cheek.
Her hair was heavy and done in thick coils that glowed dully in the
lamplight. It was a deep brown, almost black, shot through with little
silvery threads of gray.
For a few moments David withdrew his gaze, subconsciously ashamed
of the directness of his scrutiny. But after a little his eyes drifted back
to her. Her head was sunk forward a little, he caught now a pathetic
droop of her shoulders, and he fancied that he saw a little shiver run
through her. Just as before he had felt the desire to thrust his face out
into the night, he felt now an equally unaccountable impulse to speak to
her and ask her if he could in any way be of service to her. But he could
see no excuse for this presumptuousness in himself. If she was in
distress it was not of a physical sort for which he might have suggested
his services as a remedy. She was neither hungry nor cold, for there
was a basket at her side in which he had a glimpse of broken bits of
food; and at her back, draped over the seat, was a heavy beaver-skin
coat.
He rose to his feet with the intention of returning to the smoking
compartment in which he had left Father Roland. His movement
seemed to rouse the woman. Again her dark eyes met his own. They
looked straight up at him as he stood in the aisle, and he stopped. Her
lips trembled.
"Are you ... acquainted ... between here and Lac Seul?" she asked.
Her voice had in it the same haunting mystery that he had seen in her
eyes, the same apprehension, the same hope, as though some curious
and indefinable instinct was telling her that in this stranger she was
very near to the thing which she was seeking.
"I am a stranger," he said. "This is the first time I have ever been in this
country."
She sank back, the look of hope in her face dying out like a passing
flash.
"I thank you," she murmured. "I thought perhaps you might know of a
man whom I am seeking--a man by the name of Michael O'Doone."
She did not expect him to speak again. She drew her heavy coat about
her and
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