the latch.
Standing there, he shrugged his shoulders, laughing softly at himself as
he realized how absurdly sensational he was becoming all at once.
To-morrow would be time. He filled and lighted his pipe, and in the
whitish fumes of his tobacco he could picture quite easily the gray,
dead face of Tavish, hanging at the end of his meat rack. Pacing
restlessly back and forth across his room, he recalled the scenes of
that night, and of days and nights that had followed. Brokaw had given
him the key that was unlocking door after door. "Guess he was a little
crazy," Brokaw had said, speaking of Tavish as he had last known him on
the Firepan. Crazy! Going mad! And at last he had killed himself. Was it
possible that a man of Tavish's sort could be haunted for so long by
spectres of the past? It seemed unreasonable. He thought of Father
Roland and of the mysterious room in the Chateau, where he worshipped at
the shrine of a woman and a child who were gone.

He clenched his hands, and stopped himself. What had leapt into his mind
was as startling to his inner consciousness as the unexpected flash of
magnesium in a dark room. It was unthinkable--impossible; and yet,
following it, he found himself face to face with question after question
which he made no effort to answer. He was dazed for a moment as if by
the terrific impact of a thing which had neither weight nor form.
Tavish, the woman, the girl--Father Roland! Absurd. He shook himself,
literally shook himself, to get rid of that wildly impossible idea. He
drove his mind back to the photograph of the girl--and the woman. How
had she come into possession of the picture which Brokaw had taken? What
had Nisikoos tried to say to Marge O'Doone in those last moments when
she was dying--whispered words which the girl had not heard because she
was crying, and her heart was breaking? Did Nisikoos know that the
mother was alive? Had she sent the picture to her when she realized that
the end of her own time was drawing near? There was something
unreasonable in this too, but it was the only solution that came to him.

He was still pacing his room when the creaking of the door stopped him.
It was opening slowly and steadily and apparently with extreme caution.
In another moment Marge O'Doone stood inside. He had not seen her face
so white before. Her eyes were big and glowing darkly--pools of
quivering fear, of wild and imploring supplication. She ran to him, and
clung to him with her