Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/121

Rh him. He did not submit to the discovery quietly, for, with all the strength of his slender athletic frame, he struggled: but after each fruitless attempt he paused, only to find himself held more firmly in the pine-tree's embrace. The toils which encompassed him were seemingly so slight, that to be baffled by them filled him with fierce rage, and he shook them and beat wildly about him with his left hand to break them away. But the branches only gave out a bruised fragrance as they cut sharply through the cold air and swayed against his face; and, after an hour or more of combat, he sank back hopeless, to wait. Save for the pain which his arm gave him when he moved it, he was not suffering; or, if suffering, his mental anguish made him insensible to it. And, as he stood upright in his trap, his mind supernaturally clear, he thought until his imaginings became torture almost unendurable.

Again the picture of his lowly home arose before him. Again, more vividly than ever, he saw Marie, pale and tearful, listening for the step she would never again hear. Oh, why had he parted from her so coldly? Why had he not told her his partially formed plans that last night as they sat before the fire? How plainly he remembered her answer when he asked her what she would do without him—"I would die, Antoine." As he repeated the words, they brought him a strange joy to know that without him she could not live, that they would meet again ere long, when he could tell her that he had always been true to her, that even when death came to him he was hastening to her.

With the certainty of death came thoughts of the future. His life, in the sight of the church and the world, had been one of outlawry and disobedience to the laws of God and man. What hope was there for him now? What a vast distance would separate him from Marie, even after they were both dead. Would they ever meet? Or, would she look as immovably upon him from her saintly heights, as the cold moon now looked upon him from the wintry sky? How could a dying man repent and be forgiven without the aid of a sanctified prayer? If only he could see Marie! She was his church, his priest, his heaven. And, with the remembrance of her love, there came an undefined feeling that if she, in her pure heart, could find him worth loving and saving, God—infinitely purer, holier, and more pitying—would receive his blackened soul and make it white and clean. As the first gleam of light penetrated the darkness of her long night, Marie prepared for her journey. During the night she prayed as fervently as her distracted heart would allow, that her search might be successful, that the welcome sight of Antoine might greet her eyes before another night. She believed that she would be guided to him, wherever he was, and so she started out to find him, or perish in the wilderness.

Through the slowly dawning day she passed toward the camp. The snow of the night still lay thickly upon the trees, obscuring the pale light and giving the forest a weird, gloomy aspect she had never seen before.

Her wanderings of the summer had taught her some things necessary to know of forest travel. She had learned the signs by which Antoine recognized a trail. So she found her way without great difficulty, though her progress was slow and she often sank down exhausted and unhappy, to rest. But there was comfort in action, and she would soon spring up again and hurry forward.

It was late in the afternoon before she reached the trading-post; she found it deserted by the hunters, for they had that morning started on their long expedition. But the permanent settlers were there, and, although they could give her little news of her husband, they could at least relieve her of the haunting fear that he had gone with his old companions. They comforted her, too, with many reasons for Antoine's disappearance. He had, perhaps, come upon the track of some valuable game, which he had followed, and thus been delayed. She had better return to her cabin and wait patiently for him. And there was a shorter trail than the one by which he had come, which she had better take on her return. She would probably find Antoine at the cabin before her.

Refreshed and comforted by her visit to the camp, she turned away from it with a far lighter heart than that with which she had entered it. The dwellers there had laughed at her fears, and she felt that she was foolish to dread for him. He knew the forest as well as she knew the meadows at home. He was armed for any encounter with wild animals; and from man, she knew he feared nothing. And in her short stay at the camp she had heard how it was believed that her husband bore a charmed life, that woodland dangers always faded before him, and foes always gave him the trail.