“I liked it well enough,” he wrote, “until one night a queer thing happened.  As evening came on, a man drove up bringing a coffin to be sent by train to the next village for burial.  When I was left alone with the thing, the man inside got up—­he really did, I saw him.  I shut him in and ran to fetch the carter, but couldn’t catch him.  When I came back, the man had got out and ran into the wood.  They had lined the box with a white bed-quilt, and we found that some miles away in the bush the next day, but we never found the man; and the queer thing is that there were two men and a girl who seem to have been quite certain he was dead.  One of them, a very intelligent fellow that I am staying with now, thinks the carter must have played some trick on the way; but I hardly believe that myself, from the way the carter acted.  I think he spoke the truth; he said he had been alone on the road all day, and had been scared out of his wits by hearing the man turn in the coffin.  He seemed well frightened, too.  Of course, if this is true, the man could not really have been dead; but I’m not trying to give an explanation; I’m just telling you what occurred.  Well, things went on quietly enough for another month, and on the last night of the old year the place was snowed up—­tracks, roads, everything—­and at midnight an old man came about who answered to the description I had of the dead man, clothes and all, for it seems they were burying him in his clothes.  He was rather deaf, and blind I think, though I’m not sure, and he seemed to be wandering in his mind somehow; but he was a fine, powerful fellow—­reminded me a little of father—­and the pathetic thing about it was that he had got the idea into his head—­”

Here Alec stopped, and, holding the pen idly in his hand, sat lost in thought.  So wistful did he look, so wrapt, that Bates, glancing furtively at him, thought the letter had raised associations of his home and childhood, and took himself off to bed, hoping that the letter would be more brotherly if the writer was left alone.  But when Alec put pen to paper again he only wrote:—­

“Well, I don’t know that it matters what he had got into his head; it hadn’t anything to do with whether he was Cameron (the name of the man supposed dead) or not.  I could not get a word out of him as to who he was or where he came from.  I did all I could to get him to come in and have food and get warmed; but though I went after him and stood with him a long while, I didn’t succeed.  He was as strong as a giant.  It was awfully solemn to see an old man like that wandering bareheaded in the snow at night, so far from any human being.  I was forced to leave him, for the engine came clearing the track.  I got some men to come after him with me, but he was gone, and we never saw him again.  I stayed on there ten days, trying to hear something of him, and after that I came here to try my hand at lumbering.  The owner of this place here was terribly cut up