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Its singing had meant that, sometime in the early sixties, Beorn had taken part in the gold-rush to the Comstock, and had worked and prospected in the Nevada mines. This was his solitary glaring indiscretion in all the course of his forty years spent in Keewatin.
"Whether I judge kindly or not, will you try to take my advice? I have told you a secret to-night which never, since I came to Keewatin, have I told to any man. And I have told you that I may save you.
He watched her plunge into the river on her return journey, swim across, run lightly up the bank to where her clothes were lying, and disappear in the gloom of the forest. "If I could only learn to care for her," he thought, "even here, in Keewatin, I might have something left to live for."
So she had been a New Englander, and her lover, whoever he was, had probably started life as a sailor in the whaling fleet which at that time set out annually from New Bedford for the North. In Keewatin the memories of men for their neighbours, especially if they happen to be private traders, are very short. The room contained little furniture.
Since his arrival at Churchill he had made the acquaintance of Pearce, and it struck him now that just such a man as this might be Lord Fitzhugh Lee. The Keewatin Mines and Lands Company had no mines and few lands, and yet Pearce had told him that they were doing a hustling business down south, selling stock on mineral claims that couldn't be worked for years.
And Carlyle's stern reply, "Because the fear has gone out of it." How odd it seemed to him that he should be recalling Carlyle up there in Keewatin! Yet, because that answer was true, he took up the thread of his London life again, that so, with the drug of memory, he might lay to rest his immediate misfortunes. He was a little boy again in the old red house on Clapton Common.
Personally he would welcome so easy a method of departure from Keewatin one which was quite respectable, and would attach no responsibility to himself. When all has been said, there remain but two qualities of fear: the fear of life, and the fear of death. Granger was only conscious of the first, therefore he could afford to be amazingly daring under the present circumstances.
Then he paused, drew himself erect, and his face went white; he had heard of solitary men in Keewatin who had commenced by laughing to themselves, and had ended by committing murder or suicide.
He foresaw that there was need for care; when the matter came to be investigated, it would be discovered that Granger had been Spurling's partner in the Klondike; questions would certainly be asked of Robert Pilgrim, as Hudson Bay factor and head man of the district, concerning Granger's conduct in Keewatin, and no good word could be looked for from that quarter.
Spirits of any kind are strictly forbidden in Keewatin, that the Indians may be protected from intemperance; nevertheless, despite all precautions of the Mounted Police, a certain quantity finds its way up in disguised forms, or smuggled in sacks of flour and bales of traders' merchandise.
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