Fiancées -- Fiction; Missing persons -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
"_Le bon Dieu_ never forget the one' he lov'," nodded Jean positively.
"An' he hav' lov' Mam'selle Grace an' M'sieu' Tom much or we never fin'
the M'sieu'." Jean made his usual sign of reverence for the Supreme
Being in which his faith was firmly grounded. "Now we mak' ready to
spen' another night outdoors. Jean will watch while his frien's sleep.
To-morrow an' we see the camp. Then, M'sieu' David, it is for you to go
to the village an' sen' the message that we hav' not fail, to those who
watch an' wait."
Late the following afternoon the overseer of the lumber camp received
the surprise of his life. The sight of two exhausted, weather-beaten men
who toiled painfully into his front yard, bearing a rude litter on which
reclined a third man, sent the amazed Scotchman racing joyfully to meet
them. A little later Tom Gray was surrounded by the comforts which had
so long been denied him. After a hearty meal and a brief rest, David
Nesbit set off for the village on the overseer's horse to telegraph to
Grace Harlowe and Mrs. Gray the glorious news that Tom Gray had been
found and would soon be restored to them.
But David had also another equally important commission to execute which
directly concerned Jean's "wil' man." After sending the two telegrams he
went at once to the home of the county sheriff, who lived in the
village. Completely disgusted with the lax manner in which the sheriff
had conducted the search, David reported to him the finding of Tom, with
a scathing arraignment which the inefficient official accepted in
scowling silence. Convinced by David's rebuke that it was high time to
redeem himself, he agreed to send out a posse of men the very next day
to cover the western stretch of forest in which the demented man had
managed to keep himself so cleverly concealed.
It may be said here that the sheriff kept his word. For two weeks the
hunters of the unfortunate man scoured the forest to find him. Due to
the wildness of the region they had great difficulty in locating the
place of Tom Gray's imprisonment. Once discovered, they found the hut
empty. A guard was posted around it, but the fearsome tenant never
returned. It was not until almost a year afterward that those whose
lives fate had briefly linked with his, read in a newspaper a lengthy
account of his capture in a town a long distance from the territory
surrounding the lumber camp. The news that he had been placed in an
asylum for the insane was a matter of relief to all concerned.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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