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The World is Yours

Chapter Fifteen

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Chapter Fifteen

Old Mat Colom was feeling very happy this hot morning. Again, he thought, he had put things straight between those two whom he so dearly loved, and last night, with the Bible and the Great Blake and Sam Butler before him, he had at last discovered the real meaning of life. And, like all great things, it was so simple after all.

Love your enemies. That was it. Love your enemies—even your wife. That would for ever put an end to all cruelty and backbiting and murder and revenge; and if—as Blake said—a thistle is a man's brother, how much more another man should be so. Mat felt that as the apostle of a long-neglected creed he must begin by loving Aggie, who was and always had been his most determined enemy. He sat on a box while the mush for the foxes was cooling in the outhouse and tried to discover something to love in Aggie; and it was there she found him an hour later, with the mush gone cold and the foxes yelping in the yards. She came up like an overheated steam-engine and gave him a slap on the ear that knocked his hat off.

"You old heathen," she shouted. "Seems like I can't go out the house a minit but you get wastin' your time. Put that mush on again! Jump to it! My! What was I ever about to tie myself up to a thing like you!"

"Now, Aggie! Now, Aggie… dear… "

"Don't you get callin' me dear, you impudent old beast! Think I'm one o' your Lily Mauds or Tamsins, I guess… "

"Now, Aggie, I won't have… "

"Quit it wi' yer Now Aggies! That don't feed the foxes— though I'll own they're not wuth feedin' at that. Mrs. Sheridan she says as they're gettin' that coarse in the hair you'll turn 'em inter llamas or suthin' before you're through wi' yer silly experiments. Get busy, will yer!"

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She bounced off into the house, where Mat heard her attacking the stove with a poker. Silently he heated up the mush and fed the foxes. They looked sadly enough with their summer coats felted into rusty patches; but they came to him, down from their boxes and up from their sandy burrows, like lovers, nuzzling his hands, blinking friendly eyes in the strong light.

"I love you, you dumb critters," said Mat. "But I am damned ef I'm goin' to love Aggie fer any man." Then he sighed. Here he was failing at the very outset of his great discovery. "Guess I gotta go to Tamsin," he said. "She can most gen'ally put things right." He sighed again. "And I sure did think I'd come to a conclusion at last," he thought, disconsolately. "I wonder did Sam Butler have a wife? Or the Great Blake?"

He went down to the Store a little later, but no bright head shone in the shady place, no loving voice welcomed. Tamsin, said Stewart, had gone up the river, and he went on shaking out the raw pelts brought in by Indians and calculating concerning past grub-staking and future loans as though nothing else mattered. Stewart, thought Mat, drifting away again, was not an attractive man, and the Store was not the same since MacDonald went away. He missed Mac keenly, despite the frequent letters which Tamsin read him, but he felt a glow of content now at the thought that Tamsin had certainly gone to see Kirk.

"He'll come back now," he thought. "I guess I sure did handle that business well. Mebbe to-night I'll have 'em both to help me puzzle out that tiling. Love your enemies. Well, the Lord is askin' a whole heap of me, and that's a fact."

Tamsin had not the least intention of going to Kirk. Even in the face of his indifference it would be hard to see him again. She only desired to drive the ache out of her heart through the ache of her body, and she rowed fast through the still heat of the morning up to the Indian camp just beyond page 333the Asulkum with some remedies prescribed by O'Kane on the night he came to Knife. She would still be three or four miles below Aroya; and if Kirk, out fishing or hunting, happened to see her he would not, she thought, want to come near.

"He has shown his feelings plainly enough all the time," she said, aloud. "It's only that I have been blind."

The click of the oars as she rowed seemed to keep time to the word. Blind. Blind. Blind. The river, low and level now that the spate of melting snows was past, ran without obvious current. She moved on its broad glassy surface as if on a lake, seeing ironstone ranges and tree-filled draws and the burning blue of sky doubled below her everywhere. The world was so richly still that she could hear the howling of sled-dogs in their various summer corrals, the splash of fish rising among reeds a great way off, the faint far call of a bird. As she neared the further bank a fragrance of roses and sun-warmed leaves and new-turned earth where some small creature left its burrow came to meet her. Over all the earth was a sense of repose, of full completeness and rest before that great arming for the winter struggle began again.

There was nothing at all of that repose in Tamsin. Under Rab's cool kiss that morning she had wanted to scream. She wanted to scream still, bending her back to the oars with long steady sweeps, setting her lips. She wished again and again that her father were home. Like Tall Thing he had seemed to give stability and permanence to the landscape. Without him everything was in flux. She leaned on the oars, looking back on Tall Thing splendid against the dazzle of blue. A slight drift yet lay in a high hollow, signalling to her of purity, peace, calm.…

"That's what I've got to hold on to," she thought. "That's what I mustn't let go of for one minute. Not ever."

She distributed her medicines at the fishing-camp; begged for the release of some miserable dogs who would be tied up page 334again the moment her back was turned, and towed on up to the Asulkum. Here she stubbed the boat to a dead tree and went up the bank. The silence of the hot midday had here its own music. Grouse were dramming in the warm juniper up the hill. There was a stir of young leaves, a rumour of little hasting wild creatures, the flutter of unseen wings. In the russet top of a spruce a squirrel chattered as she climbed into the old boat and made her way to the saloon with its tattered hangings and tarnished gildings. It was full of Kirk, this place, and it was not strange that Kirk should presently find her there, for he had been haunting the fishing-camps for days, waiting for her to come.

She heard his feet on the companion and stood still, looking with wide eyes. And Kirk did not speak, did not hesitate. He came stumbling through the wreckage on the floor and took her in his arms.

It seemed, she felt wildly, that never, never would they be able to stop kissing, clinging to each other, murmuring broken words. But in time they were sitting together on the rotting cushions of the transom, holding hands, trying to explain.

"I had to go, darling. I was coming back. I was coming when I heard——"

"Kirk, Kirk! I thought you didn't want me any more. Uncle Mat said… "

She wept now, this Tamsin who so seldom cried. She was very weak, sobbing in his arms. But when he said with that queer savagery she had always loved in him:

"That's enough. I guess we're through with all this business. You're coming away with me right now," she cried, poignantly, knowing that it was true:

"Lover, lover; you're asking what I can't do."

"Sakes! Morals an' all that! Eh? Well, get it out of your system, honey, an' then we'll light out for China or Australia or someplace right away."

He was laughing in her face; warm, brilliant, love-provoking, page 335the same heedless, reckless, enchanting Kirk she had always known.

"I was to blame," she cried. "It was never Rab's fault. Only mine. I made him do it. I…" She stumbled on, striving to make it clear, holding his eyes anxiously. He said on a deep note:

"That Mat Colom! Blast him for ever! It's his hornin' in has made us all the trouble way back to the Kluane days."

"Oh, Kirk! He does love us both so much."

"With too many folk love's another name for interference. Now, see here, Tamsin. You can rule him out and you can rule Stewart out. They don't belong any more. I guess if you never saw 'em again it would be too soon."

They argued it up and down, yet something stronger than Tamsin stood between them. She was MacDonald's daughter, but there was more than that. Although her God, her gods had hidden their faces of late, she acknowledged them still and the strength of the hills was hers also.

"It's not possible, my dear, my dear." Her voice, always more Scotch in emotion, was shaken although she stood firm. "Had I been feared and forced into it maybe… I don't know. But I chose my own way to get what I wanted, and I can't make Rab suffer for that… not more than I must."

"A lot he'll suffer wi' you lyin' in his arms this night!"

"Don't." She drew a little away from him. "It doesn't help for you to be a brute, Kirk."

"I want to make you realize what… "

"I do realize." The tears were running down her face where the bright healthy colour had faded in these last months. "He's not to blame… poor Rab. I don't know what I will do yet, but I'll find out. I'm going home, now."

"You'll come back here to-morrow, Tamsin?"

"I don't know."

"I'll come for you if you don't."

"I'll come."

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She let him hold her again, but as the pressure grew greater she wrenched herself away.

"No. I can't have that…. Good-bye, Kirk."

"Good-bye."

He stood still, watching her climb the companion and disappear. At the back of his mind something was saying: "If I can persuade her I'll never believe in anything again." And he answered it fiercely: "I will persuade her. By God, I will. All this is rot… rot… "

On the days when Tamsin went up the river she left Stewart's midday meal prepared for him; but on this night he had to get his own supper also, and he was growing uneasy and suspicious long before the hour when he saw her walking up from the river under the moon. There was splendour in the moonlight and she moved, he thought, splendidly, with her gallant step and her head high. Like one of the tall Norse women who walked with the ancient gods was Tamsin, and Stewart felt suddenly ashamed of his petty imaginings.

"Where have you been, you wild thing?" he asked fondly. "Coming back at this hour with your arms full of moonbeams!"

"I have been with Kirk Regard," said Tamsin quietly.

She passed into the house and he followed in the sick chill of an uneasy conscience. Presently she would accuse him of betraying her childhood friend to Challis, and what answer had he to that? Tamsin threw off her hat and turned to him. It was many hours since she had left Kirk, but only Tall Thing and herself knew where she had been since. And she was not sure. A jagged tear on her sleeve caught her eye and she tried vaguely to brush it off, saying, slowly:

"Rab, you must be good to me. You must help me say what I've got to say."

In sudden revulsion from his own fear suspicion woke in him more strongly, turning him by natural corollary into the accuser.

"Well? You've said already that you were with Regard.

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I think that needs some explaining considering the time of night it is."

"I'll… tell you," said Tamsin.

In the twilight of the house their bodies were as misty to each other as their souls. Stewart said:

"What have you got to tell me?"

"I went up to the Indian camp at Pomachee. Then I went on to the Asulkum because it was so hot in the sun. And… he came… "

Her voice faltered and stopped. She was tired almost to exhaustion, although neither realized it. Stewart struck a match with a jerk and lit the lamp. He spoke on a harsh and hectoring note.

"Well? Get on with it. They told me he was your lover long ago. Is that what you have to say… that he's your lover still?"

His gaunt hand grasped a chair-back as though he needed steadying. He stooped to her, and his grey face had almost a wolfish look, with the lips drawn back from the yellowed teeth. Tamsin lifted her eyes to him. Then she shrugged faintly.

"You men! You're all alike! I wonder any of you dare say you love a woman when you're always so ready to think ill of her."

"I'll believe what you tell me, Tamsin," he said, after a moment's pause.

"Thank you, Rab. I haven't been untrue to you in that way. But…"

She turned from him, struggling with herself, her head low. She said, harshly, as though the words burst from her: "I can't help it. I loved him when we were little. I've loved him all my life. He's a part of me that I can't tear out. Nobody else matters." She caught her breath. "Nobody else matters," she repeated intensely.

"But you married me. You must have loved me when you married me! Tamsin!" It was a cry she could not meet. She page 338shook her head, standing still. "But you must have! You wouldn't have married me otherwise. Not you."

"I didn't realize. I have done you a great wrong…."

Her knees gave way and she dropped into a chair. Stewart came hurriedly, putting a hand on her shoulder, drawing her bent head against him.

"Tamsin, what is it, my own darling? I'm not a child. I know what complex creatures we all are. You thought you'd forgotten him, and now you have found that you have not, although he has forgotten you. Is that it? But I love you still, dearest… dear one, and you'll love me in time. You know I always said I'd be content with… a very little… love… "

He held her fast, almost piteously. She said with difficulty:

"Don't, please. Oh, please. Be as angry as you like, but not that."

"Angry? I'm not angry, love. I always realized that I was an old man, and that perhaps you couldn't give me quite the kind of love you might have given… someone younger. But I've been grateful, Tamsin. If I have never told you how grateful I'll tell you now…."

"Don't, I tell you!" She sprang up, stamping her foot at him. "You ought to be angry. You ought to hate me as I hate myself."

"I'm too old for those kinds of angers," said Stewart. He looked at her, pushing his hand back through his thin hair as though trying to rub some thought clear in his brain. "Don't talk nonsense about my hating you. I never thought anything could be so dear. Why do you hate yourself? Because you have found out that you… you care for Regard most?"

"I always knew it," cried Tamsin, desperately. "There's no good in half-saying things now. I married you because. I was told he wouldn't come back unless I was married, and I had to have him back any way I could get. I had to."

Stewart seemed to go stiff all over. He said in a thin voice:

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"Then I must be more abhorrent to you than anything on God's earth?"

"You were for a time."

He walked to a chair and sat down, leaning back with hands limp on his knees. He looked very old. Tamsin said, half-stifled:

"I'm not so good as you imagined. I planned and planned to get my own way, and I only thought of myself, though I tried to believe I was thinking of other people. Then I began to realize how kind you were and… how very deeply I'd wronged you and… how I deserved everything. So I tried to be a good wife to you. I did try… hard."

"For God's sake don't say that kind of thing to me any more, Tamsin. There are some things a man can't… should not have to hear."

He sat still, looking down at his hands with their swollen veins of age. It was just that, he felt dully. There were some things a man should not have to hear. Tamsin said:

"Kirk wanted me to go away with him, but I wouldn't. It is for you to decide what I shall do, Rab. I owe you that. I've messed up all our lives beyond bearing and it's all my fault. I didn't realize… but that's no excuse. If you care to have me I'll stay here and do all I can for you, Rab. I think I want to do that, only… I… I can't live with you as your wife any more… "

She faltered into silence and it was he broke it at last.

"You want to stay, Tamsin?"

"If you want me. Yes, I do. Under that condition."

"As a penance?"

His voice was very bitter and very tired. Her eyes filled suddenly.

"Oh, Rab… No. I want to do it. If you'll keep me."

"What about Regard?"

"I shan't see him more than I have to. I'm being honest with you at last, Rab. I'm not so strong as I thought."

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"And he's stronger," thought the man. He tried to steady his mind. Old and seasoned as he had believed himself he had been stampeded by a moment of jealousy into an admission that might bring young Regard to the gallows yet. He could not blame Tamsin's wild impetuosity as another might have done. He could almost understand it. Love is madness, and at times it must rule. But his own life so suddenly crashed about him in ruins had left him stunned. He said, heavily:

"I can't see clear to-night. Perhaps I will in the morning. I think we'd better leave it now and go to bed."

"Yes," said Tamsin. She stood up and crossed the room, looking down on him. She tried to say something, to beg his forgiveness, but the strain on her had been too great. She lingered a moment. Then there was a sigh, a soft rustle like a bird leaving its nest. The door of her little room shut. Tamsin was gone.

But Stewart sat on in his chair until the dawn. He could not face his empty room.

The new camp had not been long at Pomachee before Mrs. Sheridan conceived it her duty to go up and hold a prayer-meeting, and this time she coaxed Miss Tinney to go with her and play the portable harmonium. Miss Tinney consented because there was just a chance that Kirk Regard might be somewhere about and she was anxious to discover how matters stood between him and Tamsin.

Tamsin, she thought, was looking very beautiful just now. She had a sad look and yet a glad look; Miss Tinney could not describe it, but she suspected that those gods of hers which Tamsin went daily to meet upon the hills meant more to her than God does to most people. But—being quite human—Miss Tinney doubted if those gods did not sometimes take the shape of young Regard, and this was what she hoped to find out at Pomachee.

"It's just too bad we don't have a resident preacher at Knife," complained Mrs. Sheridan, as a couple of reluctant page 341Indian boys carried the little harmonium ashore and set it down among the litter of tents and the half-dozen permanent houses. "But I surely do do the best I can."

Miss Tinney grunted a bleak assent, holding her skirts away from the heaps of refuse and the scratching children. No one would regret the advent of a resident preacher more than Mrs. Sheridan, who—like many other people—usually did her best, although the world seemed in no way improved by it. A stubborn old sinner, this world, and yet so wonderful. For all her sixty years Miss Tinney could not get used to the wonder and the terror and the beauty of it.

She followed Mrs. Sheridan up broken steps into the first house, which was crowded with men and women and with the babies who were destined to proceed still further with this tangle the whole world was knotting together all the time.

"Oh, my! it sure is a puzzle to my poor head," thought Miss Tinney as Mrs. Sheridan, black-eyed and chirpy, began persuading the Indians to come out to the prayer-meeting. The packed room was very hot. A half-built canoe filled most of the space, with three young bucks working among the piles of shavings. At the dirty little windows old women sewed on skin garments and young ones on the silk and bead ornamentations. There was a baby wrapped in an orange shawl, which made a gay note among these duns and browns, and Mrs. Sheridan attacked the mother.

"You'll bring him to the meeting? You surely want him to grow up a good Christian, don't you?"

"Aha," said the mother indifferently.

"My! He's a fine boy all right. Where's your husband?"

"Down river someplace. He got to make more money now, I guess."

There it was again, thought Miss Tinney. Each generation caught up into the same old round… and what for, anyway? Maybe God expected more help of us than He got. Maybe page 342He needed more help, for He didn't seem to be making an entire success of the world as it was. An old woman said:

"You leaving Weeti wit me, Ooket."

She spoke in slurring English out of compliment to her guests, but the name startled both of them. It had been posted up on the Police Barracks at Knife for so long.

"Is your name Ooket?" cried Mrs. Sheridan, fluttering.

"Aha."

"Do you come from Dawson?"

A guarded look flickered over the round eyes, turning them blank.

"Not understanding," said Ooket.

Mrs. Sheridan knew more about Indians than many people. She said no more, only whispering to Miss Tinney as they opened the hymn books:

"I'll tell Challis the first minute I get back."

Ooket did not attend the prayer-meeting, but to the white women she seemed the only person present. Mrs. Sheridan was thinking: I sure ought to get that reward, an' I will, too, and Miss Tinney was thinking how Ooket and Kirk Regard were mixed in that old story of the Winter Patrol and hoping there would be no trouble for Tamsin come of it.

"I jest wish I'd never got that fellow up here," she thought, anxiously.

Mrs. Sheridan found Challis in his shack reading a letter from Dorothy which, although loving, was sufficiently desponding to add quite considerably to his usual despondency. News of Ooket revived him to a proportionate extent.

"My word, Mrs. Sheridan, you surely have done one fine day's work. I'll go up to Pomachee right now. Did she say anything about Regard? Did she…? "

Mrs. Sheridan reluctantly confessed the weakness of her information, but Challis was not damped.

"Ooket's not a common name among mission-taught Indians. They're mostly Lydia or Sarah or something. Likely page 343she was caught late… and that would account for her morals, too. Well, I'm much obliged to you, certainly, and I guess that reward's going to be yours. I'll start right away."

Dragging on his boots and giving a cock to his stetson he presently went out to find Stewart. Stewart would be necessary to identify the girl, and although he might object he could not refuse to come. Never very quick in observation, Challis did not see, as women did, the change that had come over Stewart in this last week. He was as competent and definite as ever, but he moved wearily, attended to the white woman off the Creeks whom he was serving as though she did not particularly matter. Challis, too excited to keep still, roamed about, inspected saws, rolls of ribbon and barrels of molasses without seeing them until Stewart was free and called over the counter:

"Wanting anything, Challis?"

There were almost twenty-three hours of daylight just now, but the Store had always its rich brown shadows, and Stewart, stiff in the midst of them, looked thin and grey. Challis swung himself on to the counter, grinning. He looked, thought Stewart, remarkably tough and trim and well-kept and his voice had an almost commanding ring.

"Yep. You. I want you right away up at Pomachee to identify an Indian."

"Is it Ooket?"

Stewart heard the fear in his own voice, if Challis did not.

"Well, I just don't know," he said, candidly. "I guess so, from Mrs. Sheridan's report… and the Whiskey-Jack generally sees all that's going. But you would recognize her, Stewart. And then I'll get that signed report from you regarding the ear-rings before I take her to Dawson."

Stewart pressed his hands hard on the counter to subdue their trembling. "I'd rather not be mixed up in this at all, Challis."

"So you said before. But it's too late, my friend. Too late page 344by chalks. You have important evidence and I want it. See?"

"Supposing I can't identify her?"

Challis' jovial manner changed. He looked at the other man a moment, caressing his chin. Then he said, slowly:

"I'd advise you to think twice about that. I shall take the girl anyway, on the chance. They'll know her in Dawson. And I shall subpoena you as witness. You're the most important one I've got."

"There is… Regard," said Stewart after a pause.

"I'll subpoena him too, of course, so he can't leave the country. I think I'd best leave it at that just now. And I wouldn't advise you to warn him any, Stewart. It can't help him, and you'd do yourself considerable harm."

"You're mighty keen to hoodoo this business on to him, Challis."

"Why, I guess I'm just putting it where it belongs. Can you be ready in an hour?"

"Very well," said Stewart.

He stood on at the counter after Challis had gone whistling down the street, and his eyes saw the people passing on the boardwalk: unkempt Indians in disreputable store clothes, gnarled prospectors, keen-glancing hunters setting their feet one before the other like men used to narrow trails, and they seemed to him ghosts just as he was a ghost.

"What do you see, Shadow, in the Shadows that pass?" he thought, and knew that he saw them all, like himself, walking blindly forward into pits digged by their own hands.

When Tamsin called him to supper he found himself looking at her furtively. "What will she do when she knows?" he thought: "for this is the beginning of the end." And then the food she set before him was tasteless in his mouth; for he knew that he had never loved her more dearly, never realized more fully the gallant courage with which she was meeting her life.

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Before he went he took her hand, drawing her near and kissing her forehead. What he was going to do would separate them finally, and he knew it. But she smiled at him, holding his hand in her firm young one.

"Thank you, Rab… for everything," she said, softly, and he knew that she was grateful because he had kept from touch and kiss every sense of possession.

He went out silently, and he was silent still when he returned from Aroya some hours later. Challis had been unusually tactful, and there had been no trouble with Ooket, who merely saw in the Dawson trip a pleasant interlude of easier travel than she was used to. She could fool those Dawson Mounties as she had fooled them before—Stewart saw her thinking it, and she guessed nothing of those trump cards which Challis had up his trim red sleeve. Stewart had supplied the winning ace when he signed his name to the short statement Challis drew up after Ooket and her baby had been lodged at Miss Tinney's for the night to await the coming of the Tahkina next day, and he did not feel that he could go into the house and face Tamsin directly after. He went to the Store and worked late on his accounts, seeing now and again in the gloom the mocking tilt of young Regard's brows when Challis had served his subpoena. If Regard was alarmed he hid it well. "Oh, God," thought Stewart, weighed down by his own guilt, "if only the fellow could be innocent!"

When Mat Colom saw Ooket go out next day in charge of Challis he was seized with a blind terror; a terror all the greater because he had come to believe that the danger was past.

"I guess I got to help Kirk make his get-away right now before that girl spills anythin'," he thought. But hard on the heels of that came a worse fear. Supposing that Ooket was tried at Dawson and found guilty? Kirk could not leave her to face that. No; his boy jest couldn't be that kind of skunk. He'd have to tell. "My! I jest dunno what to do," he thought, page 346desperately. "I guess I'll have to tell Tamsin. I guess thar ain't no sense in hidin' it up from her any longer."

Bewildered and terrified he went hastily up the dusty track to the Store and found Tamsin at work in the washing-tent. She did not sing now as she once was used to do, but her greeting smile was very sweet. Sweeter than when she was a girl, thought Mat. And stronger. Feeling the balm of her strength already he sat on a bench to mop his hot face.

"Darlin'," he said, earnestly, "I guess hell's hard on the heels o' us right now. I sure dunno what to do an' I guess you got to see straight for the both of us in this."

"Ololon been naughty again? Or is it Sam Butler?" Tamsin, with her brown hands in blueing-water, smiled whimsically. "I'm not such a one at seeing straight myself, you know, Uncle Mat."

"I sure dunno where is seeing straight an' I dunno where is the Truth; but we sure got to do something mighty quick an' I don't rightly know what it is. Tamsin, Challis has took Ooket down to Dawson to answer what the Police want to know about Olafssen bein' found dead—if it is Olafssen."

"Why, I'm glad for Challis," cried Tamsin. "Here's the chance he has been waiting so long. And the Mounties were bound to get her soon or late. They never give up. Oh, I'm glad for Challis."

"Well, darlin', I'm not an' that's a fac', for mebbe it'll all come out now. An', you see, Tamsin, it weren't Ooket killed Olafssen. Kirk did it."

"What's that you say?" Tamsin came swiftly round the tub, her arms dripping from the elbows. "What's that you say? I don't understand."

"Kirk did it. He killed Olafssen. He told me. He's a good boy, but I guess he sorter slipped up that time. He… "

"Uncle Mat!" Tamsin gripped his fat shoulders, shaking him. "You don't know what you're saying. You're crazy! Uncle Mat… "

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"He did it sure enough, dearie. He told me. Self-defence, he said, but I dunno will Dawson b'lieve that after this long time. He oughter of told right away, an' I allers said… "

"Tell me what you know… Wait a minute…" She went to the tent door and glanced out. "No one there. It's quite safe. Now… tell me."

She dropped on the bench beside him, feeling her limbs like water. But her mind was sharp as Mat told in his rambling way; and she did not interrupt, not even when she realized that it was this blind old blundering man who had parted her from Kirk when he needed her most.

"… So I couldn't let him marry you, dearie, wi' that hangin' over him. It wouldn't of bin right. So I sent him off. He didn't want to go, but I made him. He's a good boy, Tanisin…. I said I'd give him up if he stayed, an' I would of. I had to think o' you. I'd of give him up to save you, darlin'. I would so."

"Save me!" said Tamsin. Her voice was low and harsh, and Mat sighed, rubbing his fat hands over his broad fat knees.

"When Sin claps his wings over the battle an' sails rejoicin' on the flood o' Death… oh, who can stand? The Great Blake says that, an' guess he's about right. He sinned… Kirk did, an' he's got to pay now, I reckon. But I wasn't goin' to have you pay with him, dearie… not as you'd of had to do if you'd married him."

Tamsin sat motionless, staring before her, her wet hands in her lap. Mat touched one of them timidly.

"I dunno what to do now, dearie. I'm a silly old man, I guess, but I did save you that, anyways. It'll be a comfort to me all my days to know that I've saved you… more than once."

"Will it?" said Tamsin, half-strangled. She felt that if she moved she would beat him with her fists, trample on him, scream at him: Don't you see what you've done, you stupid page 348terrible old man? Don't you see that you've taken away the only comfort I might have had? If I were his wife I'd have the right to fight for him… the right… and you've taken it from me…

"What are we to do, darlin'?" asked Mat's soft old voice.

"Do?" Tamsin felt herself struggling back from wild and blackening distances. "Do? How?"

"First thing I thought was helpin' him make his get-away. But he can't do that if Ooket is charged… "

"Uncle Mat!" Tamsin stood up. "I can't talk to you now, Uncle Mat. I want to be by myself. That's it," she cried, wildly. "I must be by myself… "

"The Great Blake says… "

"I'll come over and see you later, Uncle Mat. I must be by myself now."

She clung to that formula as though it would help her, but when he was gone she looked about the tent and saw no help. There was nothing in her but a wild crying need to put her arms about Kirk and shield him… shield him with all she had and was.…

She tidied away her washing mechanically and went out to the bright day and the growing grass where a little flock of North-going birds were pecking and twittering and fluffing-up soft-coloured feathers in the sun. Splendid-breasted against the blue sky Tall Thing beckoned, but she could not go to him. Moving on limbs as weak as though she had come through a bad illness she went to her room and fell on the bed. Her door was locked against Stewart by stronger forces than a key, but she did not think of Stewart. There was no room in her mind for anyone but the man whom she so loved.

At last she rose and went out to cook her husband's supper, and it seemed to her then that her mind had been made up from the first minute. She was going to Kirk. She was going because he needed her and because she had belonged to him from the very beginning. Before the stars were made or the page 349mountains stood naked against the floods two motes wandering in the bright ether had trembled, feeling each other. And they were herself and Kirk. Before this life, and after this death, it would be the same. Motes cannot die. They only change, and it was not change that Tamsin feared. A great trumpet-phrase was blaring through her mind. The eternal wreckage of his soul, it said, and that was what she feared.

"It shall not come to that," she thought, setting a smoking dish before Stewart. "It shall not."

Perhaps it was that Stewart's unease had sharpened his senses, or perhaps Tamsin's manner told more than she knew. It is certain that he felt the coming crisis, so that his food half-choked him and he was almost glad when Tamsin cleared the air at last by saying:

"I am going to Aroya to-night, Rab. I don't know when I will be back. I am going to Kirk."

"So you know at last?" said Stewart, looking under grey brows.

"Know what?" she said, sharply.

"About Regard. That he is supposed to have killed Olafssen."

Tamsin stared at him with wide eyes that seemed as though they would never close again.

"How long have you known this?"

"I have suspected it for a very long while, Tamsin." He hesitated. Since she must know soon he would not have another man tell her. "…. Challis and I found out… "

"Challis and you? What do you mean? Have you and Challis been working together… against him?" Her voice, low and controlled, had a deadly bitterness. "What have you and Challis made up between you about… Kirk?"

Stewart flushed. Instinctively he took out his pipe and put it unlit between his teeth, biting on the stem as thrashed men used to bite on the bullet.

"There is no need to take that tone to me, Tamsin."

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"What have you and Challis… made up… between you?"

"Nothing," he said, goaded into defiance. "We noticed little things from time to time, and compared them. That was before… "

"So this is how you have been amusing yourself? Spying on a man!"

"I don't think you can exactly call it amusement," said Stewart, dryly. He got up, walking away to the window. "Probably you don't know that some of your friends were rather eager to find a good reason for Regard's leaving you as he did. That was how it began."

"Who gave my friends a right to that impertinence?"

"Aggie Colom set some very ugly stories going… "

"Aggie Colom!" Tamsin's lip curled contemptuously. "Are you telling me that you helped Challis hunt Kirk because of anything Aggie Colom might say! I don't believe it! You helped because you hated Kirk. You wanted me yourself, and you wanted him out of the way…."

"Tamsin! You're unjust!"

"God's unjust," cried Tamsin, passionately. She sat bent in her chair, with her hands clenched together. "Life's unjust. What have we done—any of us—that things should happen like this!"

"Ask Him," said Stewart, bitterly. "He made us… I suppose."

Tamsin sat silent for a few moments. Then, more gently, she said:

"Will you tell me just how much you know, please?"

Flatly, and without emotion, Stewart told. When he spoke of seeing the ear-rings on Ooket Tamsin gave a slight shiver, and he added, hastily: "I didn't tell Challis about that until long after."

"Why not?"

"For God's sake, don't be so cruel, Tamsin."

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"Why didn't you tell Challis at once?"

"I don't know. Why do people do some things and not others? I think I was sorry already that I'd ever touched the thing."

They were silent, considering the implacable forces which such slight touches had set in motion. Stewart said with an effort:

"I… I thought then that you had stopped loving him."

Tamsin turned her head, regarding him gravely. Her stern young face softened.

"Poor Rab! Oh, Rab, I have done you a great wrong."

"That doesn't make my own sin any the less, Tamsin."

"I don't know. Perhaps it does. Anyway——" She sprang up with sudden nervous energy. "I can't think about that now. I must go to him."

"You can't get him away. Challis has seen to that. Unless he can lie himself out of it… "

"Do you think I want him to do that! Don't you know that I realize now that one can't escape a thing by running away from it? We've got to turn around… and face it… and see it through… and take what it brings. I see now that that's what being immortal means. Perhaps it's the only way of making ourselves immortal. I don't know."

She stood very still, her head up, her wide grey eyes looking away through the window to Tall Thing where the cloud-shadows played and ran. Stewart watched her silently. A big goddess of a girl, scarcely yet come to woman's years and yet with a big god-like conception of life. She was accepting her destiny as he found it hard to accept his. He felt that if there had been less courage in Tamsin there might have been more in himself. He said, trying to keep his voice steady:

"You—you will come back?"

She looked at him with strange dignity, as though seeing him from very far off.

"You oughtn't to want me, Rab. Whether Kirk lives or dies page 352I belong to him. I always have. A heart's like the wind, I guess. We can't control it… the wild thing." She moved near, laying her hand for a moment on his arm. "I've treated you ill, Rab. So ill that I daren't ask your forgiveness for that. And you've got to suffer for what you did as well. We are all being drawn into this whirlpool, and we have to fight our own ways out. That's all I can see now—for any of us."

She broke suddenly into deep hard sobs and ran out of the room. And when Stewart saw her again she was in the stern of Tommy Tom's launch, heading across the track of the moonlight for dark Aroya. He ran down to the bank and waved, and she stood up, raising her hand.

She kept it so until the tall reeds hid her in the twilight. And it was so that he always liked best to remember MacDonald's Tamsin who had been his wife.