He was a curious study. Every little while I'd
hear him chuckling and rumbling, his teeth agleam, and between these
times he'd grow serious. Once I saw tears rolling down his cheeks.
He puzzled me; and the more he puzzled me, the better I liked him. Every
night for a week he spent an hour or two reading those letters over and
over again. I had a dozen opportunities to see that they were a woman's
letters: but he never offered a word of explanation.
With the approach of September, I made preparations to leave for the
south, by way of Moose Factory and the Albany.
"Why not go the shorter way--by the Reindeer Lake water route to Prince
Albert?" asked Thornton. "If you'll do that, I'll go with you."
His proposition delighted me, and we began planning for our trip. From
that hour there came a curious change in Thornton. It was as if he had
come into contact with some mysterious dynamo that had charged him with a
strange nervous energy. We were two days in getting our stuff ready, and
the night between he did not go to bed at all, but sat up reading the
letters, smoking, and then reading over again what he had read half a
hundred times before.
I was pretty well hardened, but during the first week of our canoe trip
he nearly had me bushed a dozen times. He insisted on getting away before
dawn, laughing, singing, and talking, and urged on the pace until sunset.
I don't believe that he slept two hours a night.
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