fHE SUNDAY FICTION MAGAZINE, MAY 28, 1916.
By Arthur James Hayes !J!!Rz!z.
yfZi CV man roams the woods "-- " ' I'vWr .
I -4 and wild places with- -as.-
1
A reaf wo po
led by a figure
white, whose lot
black hair an
mocking laagh we
those of a wqmd
.HAVE seen queer
things, M'sieu. No
man roams the woods
and wild places with
out being at some time
or another a witness to
strange happenings. M'sieu, you will listen, and" maybe so, be- on the first occasion all about herself, and the iouBd of distant bells. Tesreaufc MS
To come into the glare lieve. so, he said, he did not know. his fright and the distance made it even
of electric lights and tell them is to invite I was a young man then, and I hunted And that evening when the moon was him very uncertain, but he thought
a significant tapping of beads and an ex- game for the Diamond Hill camps thirty- high he took his rifle and said that he heard in the night air faint murmurs a!
change of covert grins. Even when I vis- three miles from Big Bemidge. There was would stroll off for himself up on the hill echoes, like the sound of a woman laUK
ited you, M'sieu, In your grand home, I then no game warden to make the grand to see if perchance something might af- ing. And when the tote team returned
dared not tell, because the silverware and fuss over the matter of a few moose more ford him a shot. They in the camp heard town it bore two bodies, and the new cafl
mahogany at the feast that you spread or less. And for the work, which was the shot about an hour.Iater, and the old on Eagle Island was never occupied
for your old trapper friend, with the grand easy and, to one of my nature, pleasant, I doctor was not back at midnight. They its builders.
femmes and the conversation of learned was well paid. I was never handsome, found him the next day. He was lying Three year later, M'sieu, the old D1
men, seemed to make me doubt that I my- M'sieu, even when a young man, and that face downward on an old runway, and mond Hill outfit moved over that way
self had thought or seen such things as is the reason, maybe, that the woman in though it snowed slightly late in the night, make their last cut, and for 30 a mor
lmeer now in my mind after all these white never smiled upon me. Or maybe old Joe swore that there was there the and found I hunted that winter abd
vears. she bestowed her smiles elsewhere because faint tracks of a woman's little shoes. A Eagle Lake. I tracked a wounded c
Once, indeed, when the subject turned my speech was not as hers and I had not bullet from his own rifle had pierced his moose one afternoon across the Io8
to the mysteries of the great unknown, I the pleasing manners that young Harvey heart. Eagle Island. The big cow I found lyj
felt a stirring in my heart, as if I would Gale or Richard Connelly had. It is not so strange, perhaps, that even down only a few yards from the shd
speak. But I glanced about where so There was a camp over on Eagle Is- an old sportsman like Dr. Galloway should and with one shot I finished my wo
many cultured people were laughing and land, where for years no one had stayed, have an accident. But to us of the great But remembering poor old Joe Tesrea
talking, and I thought that it was no place It was a good enough cabin, built by sev- woods it did seem strange that it should now gone to his accounting, a great cd
for old Pierre, with his halting tongue and eral men from the town, who hoped to have happened where were no logs to stum- osity seized upon me Just to view the d
ill-fitting store clothes, to speak. have there a hunting lodge. They did not ble over and no brush to entangle one's olato old cabin, with its iron beds d
But tonight, M'sieu, across the camp utay there long after they had finished, weapon in. great cooking range, that had been
fire, with the pines whispering overhead. M'sieu. The reasons given were many Tesreaux had not told the others of the tended for the club from town, and n
and the old owl calling from the ridge, the and different. Most people believed jt was woman dressed all In white, but the next long since, no doubt, fallen into ruatflaH
old thoughts return upon me, and I am the tragedy, the accidental shooting of old night he strolled down to the shore of the
neither ashamed nor afraid to speak. For Dr. Galloway and the drowning of lake, that he might think of many things, I was well up the steep path for Ea
there is that about the wilderness that Mathews, the young lawyer whom the and there he saw young Benny Mathews Island towers high above the lake, ant
equalizes. Tonight I am not ashamed that town folk said had much promise. talking to the woman. The tote team had covered from shore to summit with
my clothes do not fit as do the clothes of But old Joe Tesreaux, who was their not yet arrived for the body, and so camp densest evergreen growth when I he:
city men. It seems perfectly natural that guide, told me when he had been a month had not broken up. footsteps approaching. The next mom
I should hold my opinion against even away from the whisky that it was not the Tesreaux said that for reasons he could some one rounded the bend in the tri
you, who talk with the tongue of educa- mere deaths that drove away the others, never utter he did not go nearer that Mon Dieu: It was a beautiful young g
tion. and know many things that we of the He said it was the woman in white. He strange woman. But he heard her laugh- M'sieu, and she was dressed from head
North have never heard. For I would tell told me, M'sieu, as I tell you, across the ter, and that of young Mathews.' foot in white. White sweater and jacl
you of something that I have cherished in glow of the camp fire, far out on an island There was a thin film of ice over the white skirt and moccasins, white glo
secret these thirty years. in the Rainey, where his words did not lake on that clear cold late November and toque.
The northern lights flame tonight as seem so strange, and where I believed. night, and after a while the two of them I thought in the instant of old Dr.
they did on that other night when hap- started to walk out upon it. They were loway and young Mathews, and I f
pened that which I will tell. There was She.was not a ghost woman, or one of walking toward Eagle Island, where had M'sieu, that strange stirring of the ad
then, too, a still cold that crackled in the those creatures with trailing white robes been just completed the camp that the that careless men call having the M
sklent pines and birches and cedars. And that vanish into the walls. Tesreaux said club intended to use. Old Joe watched stand on end. It is not for my thd
the moon rose in the sky with a silver she was both young and most extraordi- them in silent fear. The ice crackled un- tongue to describe that girl. She stood:
grandeur nke this, when we huddle about na ire beautiful. Where she came from der foot, and Mathews .seemed to pause the trail before me. silent,5 but smiling wJ
the embers of a moose hunter's camp. Tesreaux did not know. One evening he and hang back. But the woman in white her lips, which were red, and her ej
You were talking of women, M'sieu. I went to the spring for water, and there he grasped his hand, laughing, and drew him which were the largest and blackee
believe you have said that the mystery of first saw her. She was talking to Dr. Gal-, forward. have ever seen. Her hair, where it esc
the other sex is the nonsensical prattle of loway, and they were looking into each And then with an awful crackling the in 'little curls beneath the toque, wmh
poets and dreamers. Yet I, Pierre Lerue. other's eyes and smiling. ice gave way under the man's feet. He jet black, and her cheeks, so far from
who know no poetry, and never dream in Joe got the water, but he said that for seemed to disappear beneath the surface ing chalky like those of a ghost or spii
daylight hours, say that I have seen things ail his fifty-eight years his heart seemed almost at once, and if he ever rose it was maybe, were the brightest pink that
that a man scoffs at in daylight but be- to stop a moment, when the woman looked somewhere under the ice where Tesreaux could well desire.
lieves at night with the frost fingers of right at him. When the old doctor re- could not see him. And the woman ran Her face, M'sieu, perhaps beca'
the treat fear clutching at his heart. turned to camp he made so bold as to ask lightly over the ice and disappeared with- framed in so much snowy whiteness,
I have seen with my own eyes things him who was the beautiful mam'selle with out a backward glance, in the thick ever- the most vividly beautiful thins that
that you, anywhere but out here on deso- whom he talked. But the old doctor only greens of Eagle Island. eyes have rested upon. I hare seen, et
late Shasbewa Point, would call the tale looked at him strangely and told him that The patter of her feet on the ringing enough, those what is it you say?
of an old woman. But here, perhaps, the etiquette was not to ask a young lady ice was distinct, and seemed almost like calendars that they give away' in' i