It puzzled him.

He did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had done.

He had lived so long among primitive people that he was more accustomed to study faces than find the truth from words, and he had always been conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, was at heart as primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the North.

There was also in her something of that mystery which belongs to the universal itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native human.
"She has far to go," the priest said to himself as he turned to greet Ingolby with a smile, bright and shy, but gravely reproachful, too.
This happened on the day before the collision between the railway-men and the river-drivers, and the old priest already knew what trouble was afoot.
There was little Felix Marchand did which was hidden from him.

He made his way to Ingolby to warn him.
As Ingolby now walked in the woods towards Gabriel Druse's house, he recalled one striking phrase used by the aged priest in reference to the closing of the railway offices.
"When you strike your camp, put out the fires," was the aphorism.
Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory again.