Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/120

 snow which fell in feathery flakes. The last hours of the night were made endurable only by the resolve to go in search of him as soon as day came. When the east showed signs of dawn, something of the comfort which light always brings after a night of suffering came to her. And she consoled herself with many a good reason why he had not come, as she hurriedly made preparations for her departure; he had not disposed of his furs until too late, or perhaps he had really been angry with her, and had stayed away just to give her this anxious night. She did not know her way to the camp; all she could do was to go in the same direction he had gone the day before. Only the day before! What an eternity lay between her and the time he had given her that half-angry, half-reconciling kiss, and hurried away!

CHAPTER III.

FOR a time after Antoine left the camp, he made good progress. As he sped over the ground, absorbed in his thoughts and plans for the future, he found his way more by instinct than care, and before night was really upon him, he was several miles on his way toward his home. He whistled softly to himself as a picture of the bright, warm room, with Marie for its center, arose before him. And he resolved that before he slept he would tell her what he had so nearly told her the night before. Yes, as soon as the spring opened, they would once more take up their wandering life, but this time with their faces toward civilization. During the last twenty-four hours he had seen how impossible a continuation of their present life would be for any time. The unsettled, homeless existence which they must lead in the forest, he now, for the first time, thought of as a wrong to Marie. To him, the forest meant wild, happy freedom—freedom from care, law, or duty, while the life toward which he was forcing himself meant prosaic virtue, and impulse forever controlled. And, although his every feeling rebelled against the change, the determined will which had always made him so uncontrollable, and the broad, generous nature which had once made him break away from all rule, now made him see a duty which he had brought into his life, and seeing which compelled him to perform it.

The moon rose at last and mottled his way with brilliancy and gloom as its light by turns fell through the naked boughs, or was intercepted by the shade of the pines.

The silence of the night was unbroken, save by the low shuffling of his snow-shoes as he made his way through the trackless waste. Now and then he would pause for rest, and then press on, indifferent to the night and its loneliness. The way was long, he was tired from his day of excitement and travel, and he began to feel some misgivings about reaching home in time to save Marie from a night of watching. There was a different trail from the one taken by himself and companions that morning, which would cut off a mile or two of his journey, and into that he would turn. He shifted his course, and was soon at the stream which marked the new trail. Following its guidance a short distance, he came to a pine-tree which a late storm had uprooted, and which now lay across the frozen river. The sight of the tree decided him to cross and follow the path on the other side. And, yielding to a desire to feel something more solid than crumbling snow under his feet, he shook off his shoes and climbed upon the fallen trunk. As he did so, he noticed that the ice had been shattered by the tough branches, and the water was running swift and cold through the green leaves. He strode forward along the ice-incrusted bark with a free, careless step. In the middle of the stream, he sprang lightly past an interfering bough, slipped as he regained his footing, clutched at the branches overhead, crashed through the wiry tree, and an instant later felt the icy water sweeping over his feet.

The fall, when he realized it, seemed only the interruption of a moment, and the slight inconvenience of a pair of wet moccasins which would soon freeze and cease to trouble him. He threw his arm up for a supporting branch by which to extricate himself, but it fell back powerless, and sent a sickening thrill through his frame. Still, even now, he reasoned, his accident could be nothing serious, and he struggled up to free himself from the close-lapping branches. But the short struggle showed him how vain it was. He could neither rise nor sink. The heavy burden on his shoulders held him firmly down. Beneath, his only foot-hold was the rushing water, and he seemed bound about by a thousand firmly fixed cords in the slender, tough branches. More than the slightest movement was an impossibility, and by degrees the horrible truth that he was chained in a prison, in a spot which might not be traversed for years by human feet, and from which he could only be released by the hand of death, forced itself upon