So he did not stay long enough to observe Carr lay two of his letters on
the table after a brief glance, and sit looking fixedly at the third,
which by the length of envelope and thickness of enclosure might
conceivably have contained some document of a legal or official nature.
Carr looked at this letter a long time before he tore it open. He took a
still longer time to peruse its contents. He sat for several minutes
thereafter turning the sheets over and over in his lean fingers, until
in fact he became aware that his daughter's eyes were fixed on him with
a lively curiosity in their gray depths.
"What is it, Dad?" she asked, as he tucked envelope and foolscap pages
into the inside pocket of his coat.
"Oh, nothing much," he said shortly.
But he leaned back in his chair and immediately became absorbed in
thought that accentuated the multitude of fine lines about his eyes and
drew his lips together in a narrow line. Sophie sat regarding him with a
look of wonder.
This trifling incident, naturally, did not come under the notice of Mr.
Thompson. Conceivably he would not have noticed had he been present, nor
have been in any degree interested.
He was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied at that precise moment with
the painful and disagreeable consequences of attempting to split
kindling by lantern light. To be specific the axe had glanced and cut a
deep gash in one side of his foot.
At about the particular moment in which Sam Carr leaned back in his
chair and fell into that brown study of a matter that was to have a
far-reaching effect, Mr. Thompson was seated on his haunches on his
cabin floor, his hands stained with blood and a considerable trail of
red marking his progress from woodpile to cabin. His face was white, and
his hands rather shaky by the time he finished binding up the wound. The
cut stung and burned. When he essayed to move he found himself quite
effectually crippled.
For the first time in his twenty-five years of carefully directed
existence Mr. Thompson swore a loud, round, Anglo-Saxon oath. Whether
this relieved his pent-up feelings or not he appeared to suffer no
remorse for the burst of profanity. Instead, he rose and limped
painfully about the building of a fire and the preparation of his
supper.