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Updated: June 19, 2025
Granger brought the lantern nearer and was stooping to his work, when Spurling stopped him, laying his hand upon his shoulder. "Hist! What's that?" he said. Granger listened. He could distinctly hear the crunch of footsteps on the snow, moving stealthily away from the cabin.
The man must have waited somewhere, and seen him coming. He must know now that he was being followed, and could not be far ahead. "Well, it's death whatever happens," thought Granger; "to go on to God's Voice is death; to return to Murder Point is death. I'd just as soon die by this man's hand, trying to avenge Spurling, as one cold morning in Winnipeg with a rope about my neck."
Careless of his own safety, he had gone after the animal, belabouring its head with the stock of his rifle, for he was afraid to shoot, lest he should wound his companion. It had dropped its prey and fled, bounding off into the dusk between the tree-trunks, leaving Spurling a little mauled but not much injured.
And all the while he was listening, Granger was planning by what means he might detain Strangeways, and hazarding what progress Spurling had made by this time in his escape. "A life for a life," he thought; "and Spurling once saved my life. Until I have cancelled that debt, even though Mordaunt has been slain, I will stand by him."
He desired to hide himself; entering his shack, he pushed to the door. He was tired; his brain ached with thought, and his thought was disjointed. He could not believe that Spurling had ever come; it was all an hallucination. Thinking about the past had made him imagine all that, or else he had dreamed it in the night.
Yet Spurling had not gone mad; he was too careful of his life and future happiness to permit himself to do that. Then he must have done it for a threat, hoping by the daring and grim humour of his brutality to strike terror into Strangeways and warn him back.
"I can write no more. I must go out and walk about." Spurling gulped down a sob, and without comment crunched the sheet up in his hand, and flung it towards the stove; but it fell short and rolled to where Granger was standing. He stooped, picked it up and smoothed it out. "I'll put it in my pocket," he said, "to remember what we were; we may need the reminder on our journey."
He had been smaller in stature than himself, as had been the creature at the Shallows, but he had had the same peculiarities of clothing and was very much alike. Yet he strove to drive down all his doubts and to believe the thing which he desired that the phenomenon was the result of imagination, and that Spurling was not dead.
Once more he was an emotional living creature, with a throbbing heart and brain, instead of a carcass which walked, and was erect, and muttered occasional words with its mouth as if it were alive, and was in reality a dead thing to which burial had been denied. "Yes, it's Spurling," replied the traveller in a hoarse, uneager voice; then, "Has anyone been here before me?"
"You are right; yes, I think He would say that. Even I have asked myself that question before to-day." "You did not ask yourself; it was God's voice." "And I could give no answer to what He said. Père Antoine, before we met, I had often wondered what I would say to Spurling should we meet again.
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