Every detail of that room was familiar.
There was the heavy, homemade chair wherein Sam Carr was wont to sit and
read. Close by it stood Sophie's favorite seat. A nickel-plated oil lamp
gave forth a mellow light under a pale birch-bark shade. But he missed
the old man with a pipe in his mouth and a book on his knee, the
gray-eyed girl with the slow smile and the sunny hair.
"Mr. Carr and Sophie--are they home?" he asked at length.
The Indian woman shook her head.
"Sam and Sophie go 'way," she said placidly. "No come back Lone Moose
long time--maybe no more. Sophie leave sumpin' you. I get."
She crossed the room to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's
library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter.
This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the
wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively,
her moon face void of expression, except perhaps the mildest trace of
curiosity.
Thompson fingered the envelope for a second, scarcely crediting his
ears. The letter in his hands conveyed nothing. He did not recognize the
writing. He was acutely conscious of a dreadful heartsinking. There was
a finality about the Indian woman's statement that chilled him.
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