He knew it all now.  He had painfully learned the complete story of disaster.  And, to his sturdy mind, it was a deplorable example of almost unbelievable human weakness.

Standing had conveyed his final determination to abandon his Labrador enterprise in the correspondence which had passed between them during the three months which had elapsed since the funeral of his wife and stillborn child.  And during that time their friendship had been sorely tested.  There had been times when the lawyer’s native patience had been unequal to the strain.  There had been times when his temper had leapt from under the bonds which so strongly held it.  But for all the ordeals of that prolonged correspondence, for all he deplored the pitiful weakness in the other, his friendship remained, and he finally accepted his instructions.  But the whole thing left him very troubled.

As the hour of noon approached, his trouble showed no sign of abatement.  It was the reverse.  There were moments, as he sat in the generously upholstered chair before his desk, in the comfortable down-town office which overlooked Abercrombie’s principal thoroughfare, that he felt like abandoning all responsibility in the chaos of his friend’s affairs.  But this was only the result of irritation, and had no relation to his intentions.  He knew well enough that everything in his power would be done for the man who never so surely needed his help as now.

He refreshed his memory with the details of the deed of settlement for the abandoned stepdaughter.  Then, as the hands of the clock approached the hour of his appointment, he sat back yielding his whole concentration upon those many problems confronting him.

What, he asked himself, was going to become of Standing now that he had cut himself adrift from that anchorage which had held him safe for the past seven years?  He strove to follow the driving of the man’s curiously haunted mind.  He had declared his intention of going away.  Where?  Definite information had been withheld.  He was going to devote himself to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind.  What was that purpose?  Again there had been no information forthcoming.  Was it good, or—­bad?  The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle of it all dared not trust himself to a decision.  He felt that his friend’s unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the shock it had sustained.

No.  Speculation was useless.  The crude facts were like a brick wall he had to face.  Standing’s wealth and the great mill at Sachigo were left to his administration with the trusting confidence of a child.  The responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung upon his shoulders.  And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the unexplored forests of Northern Quebec.  The whole thing was mad—­utterly—­