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Updated: June 4, 2025
You know how we last parted in that gambling-room. I had no business to be there, I admit; but that was no excuse for your treatment." "Treatment! Why, Elwood, is it possible you have been under a misapprehension about that, all this time?" responded Gaut, with that peculiar wheedling manner which he so well knew how to assume when he wished to carry his point with another.
Gaut had noticed all this, and was not long in bringing about a private interview with his dupe and victim, which resulted, as might be supposed, in settling the matter in just the way he intended. From that time, the conduct of Mark Elwood became wholly inexplicable to all his friends and acquaintances in the settlement.
Gaut, who at first led the way, soon manoeuvred to get Mark Elwood, the next in the order of their march, in front; and then urged him forward at a much faster pace than before, at the same time often casting furtive glances behind him, as if to see whether Claud, who seemed inclined to walk more slowly than the rest, would not fall behind, and soon be out of sight.
She had been made aware that a reconciliation had taken place between her husband and Gaut Gurley; and she had seen how artfully the latter had brought it about, and regained his old fatal influence over the former. She believed she fully understood the motives which actuated Gaut in all these movements.
And these impresses were as variant as the characters of those on whose features they rested: that lingering on the sternly-compressed lips and dark, beetling brows of Gaut Gurley, ever sinister, was doubly so now; that on the face of Mark Elwood, whose vacillations of thought and feeling, through life, had exempted his features from any stamp betokening fixed peculiarity of character, was one of fatuous security; and that resting on the intellectual and guileless face of Claud Elwood was one of simple care and inquietude.
He, restless, uneasy, and evidently apprehensive of something he did not disclose, from continuing under the terrible displeasure which Gaut had so significantly manifested towards him, he had appeared, from the first, to hail with pleasure the indications of the relenting mood of the other, and seemed but too glad to be again noticed with favor.
This small lot of furs they prevailed on the trader to let them take home with them, for the purpose of making proof in court. This was all the direct evidence they could find to implicate Gaut; but they believed it would be sufficient.
During this brief but terribly pointed dialogue, Gaut Gurley, whose handcuffs, on his complaint that they galled his wrists, had been removed after he came into court, sat watching Phillips with that same singularly sinister expression which we have, on one or two previous occasions, tried to describe him as exhibiting.
When, in view of the lateness of the season, coupled as it was with the alarming portents of an immediate storm, which they had all noticed, it was unanimously determined that they should embark, early next morning, for head-quarters on the Maguntic, where Gaut Gurley, instead of preparing to come round again, as was now nearly his usual time to do, would, under the altered aspect of things, doubtless be awaiting them, and making arrangements for the return of all to the settlement.
And Claud, especially, although he had carefully abstained from all accusations of Gaut, had taken no part in getting up the prosecution, and purposely absented himself from the trial, yet felt very keenly the perplexing dilemma into which he would be thrown, by continuing the connecting link between two such deadly foes as he now found his father, whom he could not desert, and Gaut Gurley, whom he felt conscious he could not defend.
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