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It was impossible that John Malbrouck and his wife could have received him other than they did; his was the eloquent, conquering spirit.
He was roused by John Malbrouck remarking: "Yes, you have lost your bet? Well, what was it?" The youth, the childlike quality in him," flushed his face deeply, and then, with a sudden burst of frankness, he said: "I did not know that I had spoken. As for the bet, I deserve to be thrashed for ever having made it; but, duffer as I am, I want you to know that I'm something worse than duffer.
Distinctly they had me at an advantage, though, to be sure, I had betrayed Mrs. Malbrouck into something more than a suspicion of emotion.
Audrey Malbrouck drew her daughter hungrily to her bosom, and said: "Yes, dear, I will go back, if it chances that you need me; but your father and I have lived the best days of our lives here, and we are content. But, my Margaret, there is another to be thought of too, is there not? And in that case is my duty then so clear?"
As this thought grew he looked at the face of the girl, then at the faces of the father and mother, and the memory of his boast came back that he would win the stake he laid, to know the story of John and Audrey Malbrouck before this coming Christmas morning. With a faint smile at his own past insolent self, he glanced at the clock. It was eleven. "I have lost my bet," he unconsciously said aloud.
Besides, the Man and Woman lived there, and Gregory Thorne says that they could recover a lost paradise. But Gregory Thorne is an insolent youth. The names of these people were John and Audrey Malbrouck; the Man was known to the makers of backwoods history as Captain John.
The moose was driven, a peaceful captive with a wreath of cedar leaves around its neck the humourous conception of Gregory Thorne. Malbrouck had announced their coming by a blast from his horn, and Margaret was standing in the doorway wrapped in furs, which may have come originally from Hudson's Bay, but which had been deftly re-manufactured in Regent Street.
But he looked down at her as she knelt at her father's knee, her eyes upturned to his, and the tide of his fear retreated; for he saw in them the same look she had given him when she leaned her cheek against the moose's neck that afternoon. When the clock struck twelve upon a moment's pleasant silence, John Malbrouck said to Gregory Thorne: "Yes, you have won your Christmas hazard, my boy."
"Pretty Pierre closed his narration with these words: ''Bien, that Malbrouck, he is great. I have not much love of men, but he well, if he say, "See, Pierre, I go to the home of the white bear and the winter that never ends; perhaps we come back, perhaps we die; but there will be sport for men " 'voila! I would go. To know one strong man in this world is good.
Malbrouck whispered: "Now if you must have your live moose, here's a lasso. I'll bring down the cow. The young one's horns are not large. Remember, no pulling. I'll do that. Keep your broken chest and bad arm safe. Now!" Down came the cow with a plunge into the yard-dead. The lasso, too, was over the horns of the calf, and in an instant Malbrouck was swinging away with it over the snow.
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