The Lady of North Star

“None,” was the prompt reply.

“You are in doubt, then?”

“I am very loath to believe what the circumstances would seem to indicate,” answered the corporal quietly. “As you must see, they are terribly against you, and your visit to the place this morning – ”

“You know of that?”

“I saw you and Miss La Farge come in whilst Mr. Rayner and I were at breakfast, and whilst you were supposed to be still in your rooms. I found your tracks in the snow.”

“And you cannot guess why I – why we went?”

“No.”

“We went to look for that note which you showed me just now. I had meant to destroy it, and missed it this morning. Then I remembered that I had put it in my pocket last night, and naturally concluded that I had lost it outside. That is the explanation of the journey this morning. No one here but Miss La Farge has any idea that Dick Bracknell is my husband, and I did not want any of them to know.”

Corporal Bracknell was conscious of a sense of relief. The explanation was so simple that he felt it to be altogether true. But there were questions that still required answering, and he proceeded to ask them.

“I can well believe, that,” he answered slowly. “I suppose Mr. Rayner was among them from whom you wished to keep this knowledge?”

“Yes,” was the reply, given frankly. “I did not wish him to know how foolish I had been.”

The corporal remembered what Rayner had hinted as to his hopes of making Joy Gargrave his wife, and the girl’s answer started fresh questions in his mind. Did she love Rayner and favour his aspirations, and knowing herself to be already a wife, had she deliberately removed the barrier which lay between them, but of which Rayner had no knowledge? He could not tell, and looking steadily at the girl he proceeded to ask his next question.

“Miss Gargrave – I mean Mrs. Brack – ”

“No! No!” interrupted the girl. “Do not give me that name. I do not want it. I hate it. Call me Gargrave.”

He bowed. “As you please, Miss Gargrave. There is a question I wish to ask you. Tell me, did you have speech with Dick Bracknell last night?”

“Not a word.”

“But you saw him?”

“Yes,” she agreed quietly. “I saw him.”

“You stood in the shadow of the trees at a point which would give you a clear view of the place where you knew your husband would be waiting for you, and you took a rifle with you. Why did you take that rifle, Miss Gargrave?”

As he asked that question he saw the pallor of the beautiful face grow more pronounced. The frank blue eyes wavered, and for a second or two he thought she was going to faint. Then she drew a quick, gasping breath.

“You know these woods,” she said unsteadily. “There are wolves and – and bears. To carry a rifle is the merest prudence.”

A frown came on the corporal’s face. He knew that the answer was a mere evasion, and he was not pleased. But he did not challenge the answer directly.

“Miss Gargrave,” he asked, “were you afraid of Dick Bracknell?”

“Not afraid, exactly,” was the reply candidly given, “but I loathed him, and hated the thought of his coming into my life again.”

The corporal considered for a few seconds, and then asked his next question bluntly.

“Tell me, did you fire your rifle at all whilst you were out, or whilst you were waiting for your husband?”

As he made the inquiry the girl came to a sudden standstill, her lips trembling, her pale face working strangely, the blue eyes expressive of awful fear. He waited in far more distress than his impassive face indicated, and at last the answer came in a shaking whisper.

“Yes, I did. But, oh, believe me, I – I did not know that I had done so till afterwards. I do not know what happened… I saw him fall in the snow, and I waited. Then I went up to him. He seemed to be dead – and after that I must have fled homeward.”

As he listened the corporal visioned the tragedy of the night before, and as he looked into her troubled face, his heart smote him. His voice was almost sympathetic as he asked the next question.

“You say you saw your husband fall? Was it after your rifle was discharged or before?”

“I – do not know,” the girl replied. “This morning the whole thing is like a disordered nightmare dimly remembered. I know there was a moment when I was tempted to wickedness. There was a terrible hatred in my heart for my husband, and as I saw him standing there, it flashed on me how easy it would be to free myself from him for ever. It was only a moment – like a sudden madness, and then I saw him drop in the snow… I do not know what happened, but this morning I examined my rifle.”

Her voice quivered and failed, and suddenly she bent her face in her mittened hand and broke into a storm of weeping. The corporal himself was greatly moved by her distress, but the sight of it somehow relieved his worst fears.

“Miss Gargrave,” he said hopefully, “you examined your rifle this morning. Tell me what you found?”

“An empty shell in the chamber,” said the girl, sobbing bitterly.

“Yes,” he said quickly, a touch of excitement in his manner, “and in the magazine? Tell me, quick.”

“There was a full clip – but for the shell which had been fired.”

“Ah!” said Bracknell with a sigh of relief. “I thought so. Now think carefully, and tell me, did you hear another shot fired?”

The trouble in the girl’s face cleared suddenly, and a light of hope flashed in her eyes. “Why do you ask?” she cried. “I thought I did, but this morning I could not be sure. I thought it might be the echo of my own rifle – ”

“It was not an echo,” interrupted the corporal quickly. “It was the discharge of a rifle. I was a little distance away, and I distinctly heard the reports, one so close on the heels of the other that the two seemed almost like one.”

Wonder mingled with the hope in the girl’s face.

“You are sure,” she cried. “Yes! Then there must have been some one else, some one who fired at my husband, and perhaps I did not kill him after all. Oh! thank God! Thank God! I hated him, and though I was tempted, it was only a flaming moment of madness, from which I was saved. You think that? Say you think that, Mr. Bracknell?”

“Indeed I do,” answered the corporal reassuringly, “I feel convinced of it. At first, I was doubtful, and will own I suspected you. But your frankness in the matter has set the whole affair in a new light.”

A thoughtful look came on his face. For a full minute he stood there without speaking, and the girl watched him, wondering what was in his mind. Then he spoke again.

“The affair is very mysterious. There certainly were two reports and one only came from your rifle. It is evident to me that a third person was in the neighbourhood when your husband was shot. I have found the place where he stood, and I was following the track of a sled, when I came upon you just now. The track is a fairly recent one, made, I should say, no later than last night.”

“Possibly it was my husband’s team,” suggested the girl.

The corporal nodded. “That of course is just possible, but the man who took it away cannot have been Dick Bracknell. If he were not dead – and I am sure he was – he certainly was in no condition to walk away. And the team did not go away of itself, for there is the track of a man’s feet, both going and returning.”

“If he should not be dead – ” faltered the girl. The corporal looked at her, and the sight of her distress moved him to a deeper sympathy. He knew his cousin, and Koona Dick’s record in the territory was not an attractive one. He wondered how this beautiful girl had been induced to marry Dick Bracknell, and frowned at the thought that if he were not dead, she was still his wife. The girl noticed the frown.

“What are you thinking, Mr. Bracknell?”

“I was wondering however you came to marry such a scally-wag as I know Dick Bracknell to have been.”

Joy Gargrave flushed and then grew pale. “I am not surprised that you should wonder… If you will walk on I will tell you how – how it happened.”