(Why should the key-hole rust?)
The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home,
(Why should the blind be drawn?)"

He repeated the words, lingering on them. He loved to come at the truth
of things by allusive, far-off reflections, rather than by the sharp
questioning of the witness-box. He had imagination, refinement in such
things. A light dawned on him as he spoke the words--all became clear.
She sang of the Scarlet Hunter, but she meant someone else! That was it--

"Hungry and cold is the Red Patrol--
(Why should the door be shut?)
The Scarlet Hunter has come to bide,
(Why is the window barred?)"

But why did she live here? To get used to a thought, to have it so near
her, that if the man--if Laforce himself came, she would have herself
schooled to endure the shadow and the misery of it all? Ah, that was it!
The little girl, who had seen her big lover killed, who had said she
would never forgive the other, who had sent him back the fretted-silver
basket, the riding-whip, and other things, had kept the criminal in her
mind all these years; had, out of her childish coquetry, grown
into--what? As a child she had been wise for her years--almost too wise.
What had happened? She had probably felt sorrow for Laforce at first, and
afterwards had shown active sympathy, and at last--no, he felt that she
had not quite forgiven him, that, whatever was, she had not hidden the
criminal in her heart. But why did she sing that song? Her heart was
pleading for him--for the criminal. Had she and her mother gone to
Winnipeg to be near Laforce, to comfort him? Was Laforce free now, and
was she unwilling? It was so strange that she should thus have carried on