Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
"He was treated strangely by our people, and he treated them strangely in return. Why is that?" "Who can tell?" "What is his station? Is he a common trader? He does not look it." "He is a man of intelligence and daring." "Then why is he not our guest?" Galen Albret did not answer. After a moment's pause he asked again for his tea. The girl turned away impatiently.
But Galen Albret said nothing, made no sign. Silently and steadily, run up by some invisible hand, the blood-red banner of the Company fluttered to the mast-head. Before it, alone, bulked huge against the sky, dominating the people in the symbolism of his position there as he did in the realities of every-day life, the Factor stood, his hands behind his back.
"Very well, sir," said the Factor, curtly, at last. "Your time is over. I find it unnecessary to hang you. You will start, on your Longue Traverse to-day." "Oh!" cried Virginia, in a low voice of agony, and fluttered to her lover's side. "Hush! hush!" he soothed her. "There is a chance." "You think so?" broke in Galen Albret, harshly.
"Then a means shall be found to make you!" threatened the Factor, his anger blazing at last. "Ah," said the stranger softly. Galen Albret raised his hand and let it fall. The bronzed and gaudily bedecked men filed out. In the open air the men separated in quest of their various families or friends.
All three of those present had many times seen Galen Albret possessed by his noted fits of anger, so striking in contrast to his ordinary contained passivity. But always, though evidently in a white heat of rage and given to violent action and decision, he had retained the clearest command of his faculties, issuing coherent and dreaded orders to those about him.
"Are you there, Galen Albret?" he challenged. The spell of twilight mystery broke. It seemed as if suddenly the air had become surcharged with the vitality of opposition. "What then?" countered the Factor's heavy, deliberate tones. "True, I see you now," rejoined the visitor carelessly, as he flung himself across the arm of a chair and swung one foot.
Galen Albret regarded him steadily. "If I had known this before, I should never have rested until I had hunted you down, until I had killed you, even in the midst of your own people!" cried the Free Trader at last. Galen Albret drew his heavy revolver and laid it on the table. "Do so now," he said, quietly. A pause fell on them, pregnant with possibility. The Free Trader dropped his head.
But then over him swept the same blur of jealousy that had resulted in Graehme Stewart's undoing. This youth wooed his daughter; he had won her affections away. Strangely enough Galen Albret confused the new and the old; again youth cleaved to youth, leaving age apart. Age felt fiercely the desire to maintain its own. The Factor crushed the silver match-box between his great palms and looked up.
It only needed a touch to loose the flood. The physical threat of a blow supplied that touch. As the two men faced each other both were ripe for the extreme of recklessness. But while Galen Albret looked to nothing less than murder, the Free-Trader's individual genius turned to dead defiance and resistance of will.
Having sat buried in thought for a full five minutes after the traders of the winter posts had left him, Galen Albret thrust back his chair and walked into a room, long, low, and heavily raftered, strikingly unlike the Council Room.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking