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"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year." Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad." "Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing.
There's nothing to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property." He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the property, they'd let father come back?" Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick.
But he took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be both fortune and fame to him. They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. "What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?" Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney.
Matt knew this was his father's way of yielding the point, and he went away with his promise to say nothing of the matter they had talked of till he heard from Putney. After that would be time enough to ascertain the whereabouts of Northwick, which no one knew yet, not even his own children.
"Then I was the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly reflected "And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over.
The old hunter neglected his wild-beast traps, and suffered his affairs to fall into neglect; but it was not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone that wore upon him. The disappointment with his guest that was spreading through the community, involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked askance at him: as if they believed he could have moved Northwick to action, if he would.
"You goin' have snow to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within his grasp.
"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew just when and how much he was lying.
Northwick did not open his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that led from the highway to his house; they were still clogged with the snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried in the drifts. "What's the matter with the colt?" he asked. "I don't know as that fellow understands the colt's feet very well. I guess one of the shoes is set wrong," said Elbridge. "Better look after it."
He ended by saying: "It isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it. Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was found out, and ran away. That's all."
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