ring what I knew of
his easy deviltry it was probably back to La Chance and a girl who was
daring to fight him.

If I were worried for that girl I could not go back to her. I had to get
my gold to Caraquet. Besides, I had a feeling it might be useful to do a
little still hunting round Skunk's Misery. If Collins had had that
bottle of devil's brew at La Chance he had got it from Skunk's Misery:
probably out of the very hut where I had once nursed a filthy boy. And I
had a feeling that the first thing I needed to do was to prove it.

As I rode back to Billy Jones's I would have given a deal for any kind
of a motor car that would have reduced the twenty-seven miles to
Caraquet into nothing, instead of an all-day job,--which it proved to
be.

Not that I met a soul on the road. I didn't. But it took my wagon four
hours to reach Caraquet over the frozen ruts of that same road; and
another hour to hand over Dudley's gold to Randall, a man of my own who
was to carry it on the mail coach to the distant railway.

I had no worry about the gold, once Randall had charge of it: no one was
likely to trouble him or the coach on the open post road, even if they
had guessed what he convoyed. I was turning away, whistling at being rid
of the stuff, when he called me back to hand over a bundle of letters
for La Chance. There were three for Marcia, and one--in old Thompson's
back-number copperplate--for Dudley. There were no letters for Paulette
Brown or myself, but perhaps neither of us had expected any. I know I
hadn't. I gave the Wilbraham family's correspondence the careless glance
you always bestow on other people's letters and shoved it into my inside
pocket. After which I left my horses and wagon safe in Randall's stable
and started to walk back to Skunk's Misery and the Halfway stables.

It seemed a fool thing to do, and I had no particular use for walking
all that way; but there was no other means of accomplishing the twenty
miles through the bush from Caraquet to Skunk's Misery. Aside from the
fact that I had no desire to advertise my arrival, there was no wagon
road to Skunk's Misery. Its inhabitants did not possess wagons,--or
horses to put in them.

It was black dark when I reached the place, and for a moment I stood and
considered it. I had never really visualized it before, any more than
you do any place that you take for granted as outside your scheme of
existence. I was not so sure that it was, now. Anyhow, I stood in