balked by a girl I had left at La Chance to fight him alone now!

The thing seemed to jump at me from six places at once, now that I knew
enough to see it was there at all. But what sickened me at my own utter
blindness was not the nerve of the man, but just the risk he had let
Paulette run on the Caraquet road, and--old Thompson! For Thompson had
never sent Macartney to La Chance, and Macartney had had him murdered in
cold blood!

If my eyes fogged as I stared at the dead man's two of hearts, it was
only half with fury. Old Thompson had been decent, harmless, happy with
his unintelligent work and his sad solitaire,--and he had been through
seven hells before he wrote what I read now:

"Wilbraham--Stretton--pray God one of you saw all I could
put inside envelope of last letter Macartney forced me to
write. I never sent him to La Chance. I never saw the man
till he waylaid me between Halfway and Caraquet, and brought
me here. Do not know where it is, am prisoner underground.
Wrote you two letters to save my miserable life; know now I
have not saved it. Your lives--gold--everything--in danger
too. For any sake get Macartney before he gets you. No use
to look for me. Tried to warn you inside envelope, but
suppose was no use. Good-by. _Take care, take care!_ There
was a boy Macartney sent off with my horse; was kind; said
he would come back. When he does, takes this to you----He
has not come. Been brought up into lean-to, am gagged, feel
death near. Forgive treachery--life was dear--get Macar----"

But the scrawl broke off in a long pencil line, where death had jerked
Thompson's elbow, and his card had fallen from his hand.

I sat on the floor and saw the thing. Macartney, hidden in Skunk's
Misery, making plans to get openly and with decent excuse to La Chance,
had fallen on Thompson and used him. And for Thompson, writing lying
letters in Skunk's Misery in fear of the death that had come to him in
the end, there had been no rescue. His scribbled envelope, even if
Dudley or I had understood it, had come too late. The boy who took his
horse to Billy--whoever he was--had never come back. Thompson had not
even had time, in the end, to slip his written-over card into the cased
pack I had found in his almost empty pockets, before Macartney's
men--for of course Macartney himself had never been near the place since
he got his wolf dope there and left it fo