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Updated: June 15, 2025
It was at this juncture, and before a word of comment had been offered either by Mrs. Elwood or her husband on the news he had related, that Claud arrived and entered the room. "Well, God's will be done!" sadly uttered Mrs. Elwood, at length breaking the embarrassing silence, but without raising her eyes from her work, which lay neglected in her lap.
"I will know," said Claud, with a quick, searching glance at the face of the other, "yes, I will know for myself what has happened," he sternly added, suddenly breaking from the grasp on his arm, and bounding forward to execute his purpose with a quickness and rapidity that made pursuit useless. "Hold!" cried Gaut, in an increasingly fierce and angry tone, "hold, instantly, on your life, hold!
Half my nights, for months, Claud, have been made sleepless by the bodings and fears of the evil day, which, as things were going, I felt must eventually come; but never, till within this very hour, did I dream that our misfortunes were so near.
Such were the circumstances under which we have brought this singularly-assorted party of trappers to the notice of the reader, as they lay sleeping in their bough-constructed tents, Gaut and Mark Elwood under one cover, and Claud under another, which he had fixed up for himself on the opposite side of their fire, on the ominous night which was destined to prelude the most tragic and melancholy scene of our variously eventful story.
When Claud Elwood reached home, on the eventful visit to the Magalloway which resulted in the exchange of vows between him and Avis Gurley, as intimated at the close of the last chapter, he at once suspected, from the sad and troubled looks of his mother and the disturbed manner of his father, that the secret of his late visits abroad, as well as of the unexpected advent of the family visited, had, in some way, become known to them in his absence.
"Oh, if you are happy! But I am so surprised. Who is it?" "Guess," said Deb. "I could not. I haven't an idea. Some Englishman, of course." Deb shook her head. "European, then? Some prince or count, as big as Francie's, or bigger?" Deb wrinkled a disdainful nose. "It is no use, Moll; you would not come near it in fifty tries. I'll tell you Claud Dalzell." "What the deadly enemy!"
"On behalf of my dear wife that is to be," said Claud, with a quiet mastery of himself that was in striking contrast to the old man's agitation, "and as a grateful duty of my own, I beg to thank you all, and especially Mr Pennycuick, for this great kindness for your generous sympathy with us in our present happiness.
Phillips, the old hunter, came into the field where we were last night, and said he was out of meat, and must skirt the lake to-day for a buck. I presume Claud may have joined him. There! hark! that sounded like Claud's piece," he added, as the distant report of a gun rose from the woods westward of the lake and died away in swelling echoes on the opposite shore.
"He'll be a clever fellow who tells you that, young greengoose from the country!" was the answer, only that the words used were more offensive, and were followed by the usual garnishing of oaths and by blasphemous allusions to Melchisedec, from which Tom gathered that nothing was known to the world at large as to the parentage or descent of the man they called Lord Claud, and that this title had been bestowed upon him rather as a nickname than because it was his by right.
"Not that I am aware of," answered the other, with a lighting of the eyes. "Some would tell you that one was enough even for so vast a city and realm as this!" "Because," continued Tom, "I was charged with a message for one Lord Claud, and I marvel that it can be your worshipful self, for he that sent it was a strange man to speak of himself as your master."
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