This thought was wholly heartening and he dwelt upon it a long time. She
must have thought him capable of deeds of high emprise or she would not
have chosen this fragment as her last word to him. Her choice of a
message implied a certain faith that he might, if he chose, break the
shackles of fear and custom that bound him and do something that would
lift him out of himself. The card with the good wishes gave a soothing,
saving personal touch to the communication. She had drawn the pen across
a Chicago street number and supplied no other address; but after a dark
moment in which he accepted this as a delicate hint that the incident
was closed, he concluded that very likely she had deleted the address
hastily for the reason that she was to disappear into the woods for the
summer. Still, she might have substituted the camp address and he
fretted over this for an hour. She left him without excuse for a reply,
and he gravely reflected that the Marquis of Montrose was the only
person to whom he could protest, but as she had copied from the
quotation book the figures "1621-1640" and added them to the name for
his illumination, it was clearly impossible to ask the author for an
interpretation of his stanza.
Archie was lulled to sleep by the encouraging thought that what she had
done was to give him a commission to redeem himself by strange and
moving adventures, and he dreamed that he had climbed to the remote
fastnesses of the Rockies, and captured a mountain sheep alive and
walked into his sister's house with the animal under his arm and
presented it to Miss Perry at the tea table.
He changed trains at Boston and again at Portsmouth, where he checked
his bag. At two o'clock he reached Bailey Harbor, where he verified his
memorandum as to the return trip and found the telegram he expected from
the New York brokerage office in which he was a silent partner, saying
that his booking for Banff had been changed as requested. He never took
the chance of being stuffed into an upper berth, or riding in a day
coach, and he congratulated himself upon his forethought and the ease
with which he was proceeding upon his sister's errand.
He stepped into the only taxi in sight and drove to the village
druggist's for the key to the Congdon house.
"Just go in and take your time to it," said the man. "Lights and water
haven't been turned off and if you take the house your folks can step
right in. Mrs. Congdon left only yesterday. Suppose you'll be going on
the five eleven; it's your only chance of getting back to Boston
tonight. If you don't find it convenient to stop here again, just leave
the key under the door mat."
"I guess you'll find the place all shipshape," said the driver, as they
set off. "Folks came up early but didn't stay long. Left in a hurry;
kind o' funny, skippin' the way they did."
"There hadn't been sickness in the family?" asked Archie, apprehensively
thinking that he might be stumbling into infection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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