d, indifferent women were in bed and asleep, and the shiftless
rats of men were still away. There were no dogs to bark at me: I had
learned that in my previous sojourn there. Dogs required food, and
Skunk's Misery had none to spare. I went back through the one winding
alley that was familiar to me, found the hut where I had nursed the boy,
and walked in.

There was not any Collins there, anyhow. The boy and his mother were in
bed, or what went for being in bed. But at the sound of my voice the
woman fairly flung herself at me, saying that her son was recovered
again, and it was I who had saved him for her. She piled wood on the
fire that was built up against the face of the rock that formed two
sides of her house, and jabbered gratitude as I had never thought any
Skunk's Misery woman could jabber. And she did not look like one,
either; she was handsome, in a haggard, vicious way, and she was not
old. I did not think myself that her son looked particularly recovered.
He lay like a log on his spruce-bough bed, awake and conscious but
wholly speechless, though his mother seemed satisfied. But I had not
come to talk about any sick boys. I asked casually where I could find
the stranger who had been in Skunk's Misery lately. But the woman only
stared at me, as if the idea would not filter into her head. Presently
she said dully that there had been no stranger there; I was the only one
she had ever seen.

It was likely enough; a Skunk's Misery messenger had more probably taken
the wolf dope to Collins. I asked casually if she had any more of the
stuff I had spilt on my clothes, and where she had got it,--and once
more I ran bang up against a stone wall. The woman explained
matter-of-factly that she had not got it from any one. She had found it
standing in the sun beside one of the rocks, and stolen it, supposing it
was gin. When she found it was not she took it for some sort of
liniment; and put it where I had knocked it over on myself. She had
never seen nor heard of any more of it. But of course it might have
belonged to any one in the place, only I could understand she could not
ask about it: which I did, knowing how precious a whole bottle of
anything was in those surroundings. As to where she had found it, she
could not be sure. She thought it was by the new house the Frenchwoman's
son had built that autumn and never lived in!

I pricked up my ears. The Frenchwoman's son was one of the men arrested
in Quebec province f