That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in her eyes.
"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.
She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had deprived her of some earthliness.
He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge, looking for her, his soul in that cry:
"Sophie! Sophie!"
He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael coming out to meet him.
"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
Potch waited for him to continue.
"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael said.
Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at all, Michael said.
She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He knelt beside her.
"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and anguish in those words.
CHAPTER XVIII
The men met to talk about Michael next evening. The meeting was informal, but every man on the fields had come to Fallen Star for it.
The hall was filled to the doors as it had been the the night before, but the crowd had none of the elastic excitement and fighting spirit, the antagonisms and enthusiasms, which had gone off from it in wave-like vibrations the night before. News of Arthur Henty's death had left everybody aghast, and awakened realisation of the abysses which even a life that seemed to move easily could contain. The shock of it was on everybody; the solemnity it had created in the air.
George Woods, elected spokesman for the men, and Roy O'Mara deputed to take notes of the meeting because he was reckoned to be a good penman, sat at a table on the platform. Michael took a chair just below the platform, facing the men. He was there to answer questions. No one had asked him to be present, but it was the custom when men of the Ridge were holding an inquiry of the sort for the man or men concerned to have seats in front of the platform, and Michael had gone to sit there as soon as the men were in their places.
"This isn't like any other inquiry we've had on the Ridge," George Woods said. "You chaps know how I feel about it--I told you last night. But Michael was for it, and I take it he's come here to answer any questions ... and to clear this thing up once and for all.... He's put his case to you. He says he'll stand by what you say--the judgment of his mates."
Anxious to spare Michael another recital of what had happened, he went on:
"There's no need for Michael to repeat what he said last night. If there's any man here wasn't in the hall, these are the facts."
He repeated the story Michael had told, steadily, clearly, and impartially.
"If there's any man wants to ask a question on those facts, he can do it now."
George sat down, and M'Ginnis was on his feet the same instant; his bat-like ears twitching, his shoulders hunched, his whole tall, thin frame strung to the pitch of nervous animosity.
"I want to know," he said, "what reason there is for believing a word of it. Michael Brady's as good as admitted he's been fooling you for goodness knows how long, and I don't see----"
"Y' soon will, y'r bleedin', blasted, fly-blown fool," Bully Bryant roared, rising and pushing back his sleeves.
"Sit down, Bull," George Woods called.
"The question is," he added, "what reason is there for believing what Michael says?"
"His word's enough," somebody called.
"Some of us think so," George said. "But there's some don't. Is there anyone else can say, Michael?"
Michael shook his head. He thought of Snow-Shoes, but the old man had refused to be present at the inquiry or to have anything to do with it.
He had pretended to be deaf when he was asked anything about Paul's opals. And Michael, who could only surmise that Snow-Shoes' reasons for having taken the stones in a measure resembled his own when he took them from Paul, would not have him put to the torture of questioning.
George had said: "It might make a lot of difference to Michael if you'd come along, Mr. Riley."
But Snow-Shoes had marched off from him as if he had not heard anyone speak, his blue eyes fixed on that invisible goal he was always gazing at and going towards.
George had not seen him come into the hall; but when he was needed, his tall figure, white clad and straight as a dead tree, rose at the back of the hall.
"It's true," he said. "I wanted to be sure of Michael; I shadowed him. I saw him with the stones when he says. I did not see him with them any other time."
He sat down again; his eyes, which had flashed, resumed their steady, distant stare; his features relapsed into their mask of impassivity.
M'Ginnis sprang to his feet again.
"That's all very well," he cried, sticking to his question. "But it's not my idea of evidence. It wouldn't stand in any law court in the country. Snow-Shoes----"
"Shut up!"
"Sit down!"
Half a dozen voices growled.
Because of the respect and affection they had for him, and because of a certain aloof dignity he had with them, no man on the Ridge ever addressed Snow-Shoes as anything but Mr. Riley. They resented M'Ginnis calling him "Snow-Shoes" to his face, and guessed that he had been going to say something which would reflect on Snow-Shoes' reliability as a witness. They admitted his eccentricity; but they would not admit that his mental peculiarities amounted to more than that. Above all, they were not going to have his feelings hurt by this outsider from the Punti rush.
Broad-shouldered, square and solid, Bill Grant towered above the men about him. "This doesn't pretend to be a court of law, Mister M'Ginnis,"
he remarked, with an irony and emphasis which never failed of their mark when he used them, although he rarely did, and only once or twice had been heard to speak, at any gathering. "It's an inquiry by men of the Ridge into the doings of one of their mates. What they want to know is the rights of this business ... and what you consider evidence doesn't matter. It's what the men in this hall consider evidence matters. And, what's more, I don't see why you're butting into our affairs so much: you're not one of us--you're a newcomer. You've only been a year or so in the place ... and this concerns only men of the Ridge, who stand by the Ridge ways of doing things.... Michael's here to be judged by his mates ... not by you and your sort.... If you'd the brain of a louse, you'd understand--this isn't a question of law, but of principle--honour, if you like to call it that."
"Does the meeting consider the question answered?" George Woods inquired when Bill Grant sat down.
"Yes!"
A chorus of voices intoned the answer.
"If you believe Michael's story, there's nothing more to be said,"
George continued. "Does any man want to ask Michael a question?"
No one replied for a moment. Then M'Ginnis exclaimed incoherently.
"Shut up!"