And yet as he went, only half-conscious of what he was doing, and
leaning more and more heavily on his companion, he knew that it was more
than the girl's disappearance that he wanted to understand. For as the
blow had fallen on his head he was sure that he had heard a woman's
scream; and as he lay in the snow, dazed and choking, spending his last
effort in his struggle for life, there had come to him, as if from an
infinite distance, a woman's voice, and the words that it had uttered
pounded in his tortured brain now as his head dropped weakly against
Croisset's shoulder.
"_Mon Dieu_, you are killing him--killing him!"
He tried to repeat them aloud, but his voice sounded only in an
incoherent murmur. Where the forest came down to the edge of the river
the half-breed stopped.
"I must carry you, M'seur Howland," he said; and as he staggered out on
the ice with his inanimate burden, he spoke softly to himself, "The
saints preserve me, but what would the sweet Meleese say if she knew
that Jean Croisset had come so near to losing the life of this M'seur le
engineer? _Ce monde est plein de fous!_"
CHAPTER IV
THE WARNING
In only a subconscious sort of way was Howland cognizant of anything
more that happened that night.
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