The dray came lumbering over the sand, and the men gathered round the dreadful heap under the brambles which must be lifted up and laid upon it, yet which no one seemed ready to be the first to touch.  But, at last, it was done; the distorted limbs were smoothed and the wounds partially covered; and some semblance of humanity came back to the dead form as it was carried slowly away towards home.  When this had been done, there was time for another thought—­the murderer?

Perhaps every one present had already in his heart convicted one person, but even in the excitement of horror some one had sense enough to say, “There ought to be a search made—­there may be some trace.”

Nor was it difficult to find a trace.  At a very little distance from the spot itself there appeared marks upon the grass as if footsteps, heavy, and wet with dark-coloured moisture, had trodden there.  They followed the tracks, and came to a place where many low bushes growing close together formed a kind of thicket.  Almost buried in this, the figure of a man lying upon the ground filled them for a moment with a new consternation—­but this was no lifeless body.  They dragged it out—­a squalid, miserable object, with bleared eyes and red disfigured face, a drunken, half-imbecile Indian.

He was so overcome, indeed, with the heavy sleep of intoxication that even when they made him stand up, he seemed neither to see anything nor to hear the questions of the men who knew him and called him by his name.  But there were answers to their questions in another shape than that of words.  The hatchet that lay beside him and the stains of blood still wet upon his ragged clothing were conclusive evidence.

They led him away, after the little procession which had gone on with the dray and its load, but he neither resisted, nor indeed spoke at all.  He seemed not to understand what was going on; and the men about him were for the moment too full of horror, and of that awe which belongs to the sight of death, to be much disposed to question him.

So they took murderer and victim both to the sawmill, and there waited, dreading to carry their ghastly load into the town till such warning as was possible had been given.

Meantime Harry Scott, with his mind full of his mission, drove towards Cacouna.  He saw nothing of the people he passed, or who passed him; he saw only the sight he had just left, except when there rushed into his recollection for a moment the wedding-day scarcely six weeks ago, and the certainty of happiness which then seemed to wait both bride and bridegroom.  And now?  “Poor Bella!” broke from his lips, and he shuddered as he fancied, not Bella, but his cousin Magdalen crushed down in her youth by such a blow as this.  But the momentary, fanciful connection of the two girls, did but make him the more tender of the young widow.  “Widow!” he said the word half aloud, it seemed so unnatural, so incredible.  But while he thought, he was drawing very near his destination; for he had at once decided that the proper thing to do was to find Mr. Bellairs, and leave him to carry the news as he might think best to his sister-in-law.  At the door of the lawyer’s office, therefore, the reluctant messenger stopped, and went in with his face still full of the strange excitement and trouble of his mission.