A maid there was in the North Countree; A sad little, lone little maid was she.

Her knight seemed fickle and all untrue As he rode to war at the drummer's dree.

And, day by day, as her sorrow grew, Her spinning wheel groaned and the threads wove through; It groaned.--It groaned.--It groaned and the threads wove through.

"What a stupid little song, after all!" I exclaimed. "Surely there must be another verse to it? Where does the happy ending come in?"

But, though I listened eagerly, no further sounds broke the stillness of the night save the sobbing and moaning of the sea and the hooting of a friendly owl in the forest behind.

CHAPTER XXV

The Ghoul

Next morning, I looked out upon a wet mist that hung over Golden Crescent like a spider's gigantic web all a-drip with dew.

My visitors of the previous night had gone three hours ago. I had heard them getting up steam, but I was still too weak and stiff to think of getting out of bed so early to see them off.

I turned, as usual, to watch the upward, curling smoke from Mary's kitchen fire. Strange to say, this morning there _was_ no smoke.

"Taking a rest," I thought, "after her long watching and nursing over a good-for-nought like me! Ah, well!--I shall breakfast first then I shall pay my respects and ask forgiveness of the lady for 'the things I have done that I ought not to have done,' and all will be well."

I hurried over that porridge, and bacon and eggs. I dressed with scrupulous care, even to the donning of a soft, white, linen collar with a flowing tie.

"Surely," I reasoned, "she can never be cruel to me in this make-up."

When I started out, all seemed quiet and still over there at Mary Grant's.

With a feeling of disrupting foreboding, which dashed all my merriment aside, I quickened my footsteps.

The windows were closed; the door was shut tight. I knocked, but no answer came. I tried the door:--it was locked.

"Why! What can it be?" I asked myself.

My roving eyes lit on a piece of white paper pinned to the far post of the veranda. It was in pencil, in Mary's handwriting.

"George,

"There is yet another battle for you to fight. I am going away.

Please do not try to find out where, either by word or by deed.

"Golden Crescent will always be in my thoughts. Some day, maybe, I will come back.

"G.o.d bless you and keep you, and may you ever be my brave and very gallant gentleman.

"Mary Grant."

I read it over, and over again, but it seemed as if the words would never link themselves together in my brain and form anything tangible.

Gone away! Oh, G.o.d! Meaghan gone;--Mary gone;--every one to whom my heart goes out leaves me the same way. What is it in me? Oh, my G.o.d!

my G.o.d!

I staggered against the veranda rail for support, then, like a blind man groping for a path in a forest, I made my journey across the rustic bridge, and home.

I am not ashamed to own it: in my anguish and my physical weakness, I threw myself upon my bed and sobbed; sobbed until my sorrow had spent itself, until my spirit had become numbed and well-nigh impervious to all feeling.

In desperation, I threw myself into my work.

Never was store kept so clean nor in such a well-stocked condition as mine was; never was home so tidy.

I sawed timber, when there were stacks of it cut, piled and dry in my wood sheds. I built rafts. I repaired the wharf. I added barns to my outhouses, when, already, I had barns lying empty.

I insisted on delivering the requirements of every family in Golden Crescent, instead of having them take their goods from the store.

With no object in view, other than the doing of it, I tackled the wintry winds and the white-tipped breakers, in my little rowing boat, when none other dared venture from the confines of his beach.

When the sea came roaring into the Bay, tumbling and foaming, boiling and crawling mountains high, breaking with all its elemental fury, I would dash recklessly into it and swim to Rita's Isle and back, with the carelessness and abandon of one who had nothing to live for.

As I look back on it all now, I feel that death was really what I courted.

Remonstrances fell on deaf ears. My life was my own,--at least, I thought it was,--my own to do with as I chose. What mattered it to any one if the tiny spark went out?

My books had little attraction for me during those wild, mad days.

Work, work, work and absorption were all my tireless body and wearied brain craved for; and work was the fuel with which I fed them.

I was aware that the minister knew more of Mary's going and her present whereabouts than I did, and, sometimes, I fancied he would gladly have told me what he knew. But he could find no opening in the armour of George Bremner for the lodgment of such information.

Rita and he got to know, after a while, that the name of Mary Grant was a locked book and that Mary Grant alone held the key to it.

Christmas,--my first Christmas from home;--Christmas that might have been any other time of the year for all the difference it made to me, came and went; and the wild, bl.u.s.tering weather of January, with its bursts and blinks of sunshine, its high winds and angry seas, was well upon us.

There had been little to do in and around the store, so I was taking the excuse to row over to Clarks' with their supplies, intending to bring back any eggs they might have for my camp requirements.

It was a cold, bl.u.s.tery morning, with a high, whistling wind coming in from the Gulf. The sky was clear and blue as a mid-summer's day and the sun was shining as if it had never had a chance to shine before.

It was with difficulty that I got into my boat without suffering a wetting, but I was soon bobbing on the crest of the waves or lying in the troughs of the pale-green, almost transparent sea, making my way across the Bay, as the waves climbed higher and still higher, with white-maned horses racing in on top of the flowing tide.

It was hard pulling, but I was strong and reckless, fearing neither man nor elements.

Every minute of that forenoon brought with it an increasing fury of the storm; every minute greater volumes of water lashed and dashed into the Bay, until, away out, The Ghoul looked more like a waterspout than a black, forbidding rock.

Rita was surprised and angry at my daring in crossing, yet she could not disguise her pleasure now I was with her, for she chafed with the restrictions of a stormy winter and craved, as all healthy people do, for the society of those of her own age.

"Seems as if it's goin' to be a hurricane," remarked old Andrew Clark, looking out across the upheaving waters. "Never saw it so bad;--yet it's only comin' on.