strange time of
year to start on such a journey. We must go south, and my not being very
strong will be an additional excuse."

"Perhaps," said Mr. Strafford, "your absence need not be a long one. It
is quite probable, even now, that Christian may leave the neighbourhood
again."

"Why do you say, 'even now?'"

"Because he is so much changed that he appears almost incapable of
making many more long journeys."

"You have seen him?"

"I saw him twice. Once he came to my house. You are not afraid to hear
all I know?"

"No, no. Pray go on."

"A week or two after I first heard from Mary Wanita of his having
appeared on the island, he came one night to my house. As it happened,
we met at the door, and I was obliged to let him in. I saw, at once,
that he was frightfully changed even from what you remember him. I
should have said there was no danger at all to be feared from his
attempts to trace you, if I had not perceived that it had become a kind
of mania with him, and that his senses, which seem to be completely
dulled on other subjects, are still alive on that. He asked me many
questions; and although I told him plainly that I would answer none
whatever which concerned you, he persisted for a long time, and declared
that he knew both you and Lucia were living, and in Canada, and that he
meant to find you, and make you come back to the island. With that he
went away, and came to me no more; but I saw him one day that I was on
this side of the river, sitting in a tavern with some men who looked
like lumberers. I asked who they were, and heard that they were a gang
in the employ of a man who lives near Cacouna."

Mrs. Costello drew a long breath,

"Could he belong to the gang? In that case he might be near here at any
moment."

"He did not then belong to them; but there were two or three other
Indians with them, and it struck me that, knowing the river and all the
creeks and small streams so well as he does, they would be not unlikely
to employ him. I could do nothing further then, however; and other
affairs have prevented me from tracing him since."

Lucia had been listening with painful intenseness; Mr. Strafford's fears
confirmed her own.

"There are four Indians employed now about the Mills at the other end of
the town," she said. "Two of them, I think, are quite young; the third I
have hardly seen, but the fourth--" she stopped and then went on
steadily, "the fourth looks an old man. He is a wretched obje