Madge passed Courthope in silence.  They all went to the window to see; Courthope, following in the most absurd helplessness, trailing the end of his binding-cord behind him, brought up the rear of the little procession.  Madge walked straight on into his room, where Madam Morin was again opening the window-shutters.

‘They say,’ said Madge to Courthope, ’that you have had an accomplice, and that he is gone again; they saw his snow-shoe tracks.’

He begged her to make sure that the man was gone, to let him look at the tracks himself and then to search the house thoroughly.  Outside the window the same chaotic sweep and whirl of the atmosphere prevailed.  It was difficult, even holding a lantern outside, to see, but they did see that a track had come up to the window and again turned from it.  After that they all searched the house, Courthope allowed to be of the company, apparently because he could thus be watched.  The thief of the night had come and gone; some silver and jewellery which had been stored in a closet adjoining the bedroom of the sisters had been taken.

Courthope understood very little of the talk that went on.  At length, to his great relief, Madge gave her full attention to him in parley.

’Won’t you believe that I know nothing whatever of the doings of this sneak-thief?’

Some of her intense excitement had passed away, succeeded by distress, discouragement, and perhaps perplexity, but that last she did not express to him.  She leaned against the wall as she listened to him with white face.

’We never took in any one we didn’t know anything about before, and we never were robbed before.’  She added, ’We treated you kindly; how could you have done it?  If you did it’—­his heart leaped at the ‘if’ as at a beam of sunshine on a rainy day—­’you must have known all about us, although I can’t think how; you must have known where we kept things, and that mamma had taken our other man-servant away.  You must have brought your accomplice to hide in the barn and do the work while you played the gentleman!  That is what Jacques Morin says; he says no one but a child would have taken you in as I did, and that you might have murdered us all.  They are very angry with me.’

There was conflict in her manner; a few words would be said haughtily, as to some one not worthy of her notice, and then again a few words as to a friend.  He saw that this conflict of her mind was increasing as she stood face to face with him, and with that consolation he submitted, at her request, to be more securely bound—­the rope twisted round and round, binding his arms to his sides.  It was a girl’s device; he made no complaint.

It seemed that Morin had no thought of following the thief; his faithfulness was limited to such service as he considered necessary, and was of a cowardly rather than a valiant sort.  Courthope, when his first eagerness to seek passed off, was comforted by reflecting that, had he himself been free, it would have been futile for him to attempt such a quest while darkness lay over the land in which he was a stranger.