And, if he was here, his antagonist must
be somewhere near. With exquisite torture, McElroy slowly turned his
head to right and left. At the second motion his face brushed something
close against his shoulder. It was cloth, a rough surface corrugated
and encrusted with ridges,--what but the braid on the blue coat of the
Montreal gallant!
There was no start, no answering movement at his touch. The rough
surface seemed strangely set and still.
He lay silent and thought a moment with strange feelings of new horror
surging through him.
Was De Courtenay dead?
Or was it by chance a stone under the braided coat, a hillock where it
had been thrown? That strange feeling of starkness never belonged to a
human body soft with the pulse of life.
For hours McElroy lay staring into the night sky with its frosting of
great northern stars, and passed again over every week, every day,--
nay, almost every hour,--since that morning in early spring when she
had stepped off the factory-sill to accompany little Francette to the
river bank where Bois DesCaut stood facing a tall young woman against
the stockade wall.
With dreary insistence his sore heart brought up each sweet memory,
each thrill of joy of those warm days.
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