The La Chance Mine Mystery — Key Ideas to Explore

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In Category - Mystery Collections

Authors: Jones, Susan Morrow, 1864?-1926, Gage, George W., 1887-1957 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Detective and mystery stories; Canadian fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 73,607

Reading time 321 min

Text sections 7

This digital edition of The La Chance Mine Mystery — Key Ideas to Explore is described by source-level measurements including 73,607 words, 5 hr 21 min estimated reading time, and 7 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 18.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Detective and mystery stories,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #27209

Narrated by a weary mine manager, this 1920 mystery uses a taut first-person voice, sensory detail (bitter wood-smoke, ice on hands), and a remote Canadian setting to build suspense. The excerpts reveal a plot hinging on gold, a missing girl, and a place called Skunk's Misery, with pacing that shifts from physical action to tense interior monologue.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg27209

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There were not any work horses at the Halfway, because he had doubled up the teams for some heavy hauling from Caraquet, according to my orders sent over from Caraquet the week before, and no horses had been sent back from La Chance since. He guessed affably that some one might be driving over from the mine in the morning, and that after tramping from Caraquet I had better stay where I was for the night.

I hesitated. I was dog-tired for once in my life, but I had not done any tramp from Caraquet that day, if I had told the bald truth. Only I had no idea of telling it, nor any wish to explain to Billy Jones that I had been making a fool of myself elsewhere, doing a solid week of hospital nursing over a filthy boy I had found on my just-finished road the morning I had really left Caraquet. From the look of him I guessed he had got hurt cutting down a tree and not getting out of the way in time, though he was past telling me that or anything else. But I had also guessed where he lived, by the dirt on him, and was ass enough to carry him home to the squalid, half-French, half-Indian village the Caraquet people called Skunk's Misery.

It lay in the bush, in a slanting line between Caraquet and Lac Tremblant: a nest of thriftless evil stuck in a hollow you might pass within twenty yards of, and never guess held a house. Once there I had no choice but to stay and nurse the boy's sickening pain, till his mother came home from some place where she was fishing eels for the winter; for none of the rest of the population of fat-faced, indifferent women--I never saw a man, whether they were away in the lumber woods or not--would lay a hand on him. I will say plainly that I was more than thankful to hand him over to his mother. I had spilt over myself a bottle of some nameless and abominable brew that I'd mistaken for liniment, and my clothes smelt like carrion; also the lean-to I had lived in was so dirty that I scratched from suspicion all day long, except when I was yawning from a week of hardly closing my eyes. Altogether, as I said, I was dog-tired, if it were not from walking, and I might have stayed at Billy Jones's if I had not been crazy to get rid of my dirt-infected clothes. The worst reek had gone from them, but even out in the open air they smelt. I saw Billy Jones wrinkle up his nose to sniff innocently while he talked to me, and that settled me.

"I have to get home," I observed hastily. "Wilbraham expected me a week ago. But I don't walk any twenty-two miles! I'll take your old canoe and a short cut across the lake."

I was the only man who ever used Lac Tremblant, and the foreman of the Halfway stables cast a glance on me. "If it was me, I'd walk," he remarked drily. "But take your choice. The lake's a short cut right enough, only I wouldn't say where _to_--in my crazy old birchbark this kind of a blowing-up evening!"

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The narrator’s opening complaint—'I am sick of the bitter wood-smoke, / And sick of the wind and rain'—immediately establishes a weary, first-person voice that carries the entire mystery. The prose is tactile and immediate: lake spray freezes to ice on his hands, and he must dab his face on his shoulder to see. This sensory grounding, combined with the remote setting of Lac Tremblant and the La Chance mine, creates a claustrophobic atmosphere where every rustle or footstep carries weight.

The narrative voice is colloquial and self-deprecating ('cross with the crossness of a man in authority whose orders have been forgotten'), yet capable of sharp observation. The pacing alternates between physical action—paddling, driving, shooting—and tense, still moments of listening and waiting. The excerpts show a story that moves from outdoor survival to interior suspicion, with the narrator’s internal conflict (his attraction to Paulette, his fear of Marcia’s tongue) driving much of the tension.

A Voice Shaped by Weariness and Guilt

The narrator, Stretton, speaks in a voice that is both world-weary and urgently present. He describes himself as 'dog-tired' and 'cross,' but his attention to detail—the 'oddly warm' lake water, the 'cutting wind'—shows a man alert to his environment. His guilt is palpable: he admits he 'had no shadow of right' to be alone with Paulette, and his fear of Marcia’s 'evil thoughts and tongue' suggests a love triangle that complicates every decision. The voice is not omniscient; Stretton often misreads situations (he mistakes Macartney for Hutton), and his inferences are limited by what he can see and hear. This first-person limitation keeps the reader close to his uncertainty.

Pacing Through Sound and Silence

The excerpts show a careful alternation between noise and quiet. The opening chapter is filled with the howl of wolves and the slap of waves, but later scenes rely on 'the faintest noise, more like a rustle than a footstep.' Stretton’s internal monologue often breaks into whispered dialogue ('“Listen,” I heard my own whisper'), creating a rhythm of tension and release. Action sequences—like the canoe crossing or the moment he 'stuck my head out of the hinged pane'—are brief and physical, while longer passages dwell on Stretton’s thoughts and fears. This pacing mirrors the narrator’s psychological state: he is a man waiting for something to happen, and the story’s suspense comes from that waiting.

Recurring Details: Wolves, Gold, and Skunk’s Misery

Three elements recur across the excerpts: wolves, gold, and the place called Skunk’s Misery. Wolves appear in chapter titles ('I Come Home: And the Wolves Howl') and in the narrator’s thoughts, serving as both literal threat and symbol of isolation. Gold is a constant presence—'a whack of gold in that room you’re standing in'—and drives the plot through Macartney’s fear of theft and the mine’s remote location. Skunk’s Misery is mentioned as the story’s true beginning, though the narrator admits he 'had just come from the place' without understanding its significance. These details are not explained in the excerpts, but their repetition suggests they will be central to the mystery.

Readers should attend to the narrator’s unreliability: Stretton admits he 'half lied' to Macartney and often misjudges others’ intentions. The story’s pace depends on his perceptions, which are colored by exhaustion and desire. The excerpts offer no resolution, only a growing sense of danger—both from the wilderness and from the people around him. The mystery is less about a single crime than about the narrator’s struggle to trust his own senses.

Reading about Skunk's Misery and that weary manager’s icy hands, I remembered a grey December when I sat up all night with a similar dread—not for gold, but for a missing letter. The Wire Devils — Text and Context gave me that same tight, lonely feeling, like waiting for footsteps on a frozen path.